Victor Bahl is a Principal Researcher and founding manager of the Networking Research Group. He is responsible for directing research activities that push the state-of-art in the networking of devices and systems. He and his group build proof-of-concept systems, engage with academia, publish papers in prestigious conferences and journals, publish software for the research community, and work with product groups to influence Microsoft’s products that impact millions of users world-wide. His personal research interests span a variety of topics in wireless system design, mobile networking, and network management.

Some of Bahl's seminal research contributions include: JVideo (1990-93), the computer industry’s first audio-video codec & rendering desktop hardware board; SLIB (1993-95), the industry’s first universally available software audio-video codec & rendering library; WiLIB (1997-98), a general purpose programming interface & library for wireless network cards; RADAR (1998-99), the world’s first signal strength based indoor user-location determination system; CHOICE (1999-2001), the world’s first public area wireless LAN hot-spot network and edge controller based architecture, and UCOM (2001-03), the world’s first multi-radio single network wireless system. He recently worked on Mesh Networking (2003-05), a community multi-hop wireless network for residential, city, and rural broadband access. He is now working on NetHealth (2006-), an end-to-end enterprise network management system and KNOWS (2006-) a hardware & software platform for wireless operation in the TV bands. Bahl’s research has been incorporated into Microsoft's core products, industry standards, and numerous non-Microsoft commercial products.

In addition to commercial impact, Bahl has had a significant impact on the research community. He has authored 80 scientific papers and over 70 patent applications of which 40 have issued. He has participated and contributed to standards bodies including the IEEE, Bluetooth, HomeRF, and spectrum regulatory bodies. His Mesh Networking Academic Toolkit 2005 is being used by over 900 University departments world-wide. The VirtualWiFi software has become the 4th most downloaded software from Microsoft Research with over 60,000 downloads. The annual networking summits that he has organized are attended by the leading researchers in the field and their content downloaded by researchers and students all over the world. He has given tutorials at premier networking conferences, delivered a dozen keynote talks, and over 70 seminars in computer science and electrical engineering departments around the world. His research has been covered by popular press including, EE Times, The New York Times, Seattle-Post Intelligencer, Information Week, Technology Review, DataQuest, Wired News, etc.

Bahl is the founder and past-Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group in Mobility (SIGMOBILE) (1996-2005); the founder and past Editor-in-Chief of ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review (1996-2001), and the founder and Steering Committee Chair of the first conference dedicated to mobile systems research: ACM/USENIX Mobile Systems Conference (2003-); he has served on the editorial board of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Elsevier's Adhoc Networking Journal, Kulwer's Telecommunications Systems Journal, and ACM's Wireless Networking Journal. He has served as a guest editor for several IEEE and ACM journals on topics related to mobile multimedia communications; and on networking research-funding panels and workshops organized by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Research Council (NRC) and European Union's COST. He has served as the General Chairman of ACM SIGCOMM, ACM MobiCom, IEEE COMSWARE, and IEEE ISWCS;as Program Chair of IEEE Symposium on Wearable Computers, ACM workshop on Wireless Mobile Multimedia and ACM Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. Dr. Bahl serves or has served on the steering committees of IEEE DySPAN, IEEE COMSWARE, IEEE ISWCS, ACM SenSys, ACM MobiCom, ACM/USENIX MobiSys, and on the Technical Program Committee of over 65 international conferences and workshops. He has participated as panelist in numerous conferences and workshops. In 2006, he was nominated by Microsoft for Intellectual Property Owners Association’s National Inventor of the Year Award, reaching the final four. He received Digital's prestigious Doctoral Engineering Award (1995-97) and ACM SIGMOBILE's Distinguished Service Award (2001). In 2003, he became an ACM Fellow and in 2007 an IEEE Fellow for contributions to the design of wireless networks and systems and leadership in mobile computing and communications. He is a IEEE Communication Society’s 2007-08 Distinguished Lecturer and ACM's Distinguished Spearker. He has served as the president of the electrical engineering honor society Eta Kappa Nu-Zeta Pi.