Heidi Steendam (M’01, SM’06) received the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from Ghent University, Gent, Belgium in 1995 and 2000, respectively. Since September 1995, she has been with the Digital Communications (DIGCOM) Research Group, Department of Telecommunications and Information Processing (TELIN), Faculty of Engineering, Ghent University, Belgium, first in the framework of various research projects, and since October 2002 as a Professor in the area of Digital Communications. In 2015, she was a visiting professor at Monash University. Her main research interests are in statistical communication theory, carrier and symbol synchronization, bandwidth-efficient modulation and coding, cognitive radio and cooperative networks, radar sensing, positioning and visible light communication. She is the author of more than 150 scientific papers in international journals and conference proceedings, for which several best paper awards were received.

Since 2002, she has been an executive Committee Member of the IEEE Communications and Vehicular Technology Society Joint Chapter, Benelux Section, since 2012 the vice chair and since 2017 the chair. She was active in various international conferences as Technical Program Committee chair/member and Session chair. In 2004, 2011 and 2018, she was the conference chair of the IEEE Symposium on Communications and Vehicular Technology in the Benelux. From 2012 till 2017, she was associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications and EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking.