Dr. Baha Eddine Youcef Belmekki (Senior Member, IEEE) received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and his M.Sc. degree in Wireless Communications and Networking from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB) in Algiers, Algeria, in 2011 and 2013, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in Wireless Communications at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse (INPT), Toulouse, France, in 2020.

From 2013 to 2014, he worked as a Radio Access Network Engineer in Algiers, Algeria. Between 2014 and 2016, he served as a lecturer at USTHB. From 2019 to 2021, he was a teaching and research assistant at INPT. From 2021 to 2024, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Communication Theory Laboratory at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He currently holds a position as an Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. His research interests include vehicular networks, advanced air mobility, and non-terrestrial networks. Throughout his career, he has received various awards and accolades. In 2024, he was honored with the Arab Scientific Community Organization award. He received the Arab-American Frontiers Fellowship from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. During his fellowship, he served as an invited scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the Genomics Institute, focusing on enabling remote biology labs for underserved communities. Additionally, he won the best paper award at the Global Advanced Air Mobility Academic Paper competition organized by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). In 2023, he was a co-author of the second runner-up winning paper at the IEEE Future Networks, 6G, and Non-Terrestrial Networks: Challenges and Solutions Contest. In the same year, he was the winner of the Falling Walls Lab and was recognised as an Emerging Talent at the Berlin Falling Walls event.