Qammer H. Abbasi
In 2021, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Young Professional (YP) Committee started a new initiative, the AP-S YP Ambassador Program, which is now in its second year. The objective of this program is to inspire and inform AP-S YPs on a variety of topics both technical and nontechnical to enhance their interest and engagement in the field of antennas and propagation by delivering talks at various Chapters/Sections “on-demand” virtually in addition to getting involved in various AP-S YP activities.
Editor’s Note
In this issue, Dr. Qammer Abbasi, chair of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Young Professional (YP) Ambassador Program Subcommittee, provides an update about the 2022 AP-S YP ambassadors and their activities and accomplishments. This article also announces the newly established IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Young Professional of the Year Award. Congratulations to the newly selected 2023 AP-S YP ambassadors—Class of 2023! I am confident they will meet and exceed the high standard for the AP-S YP Ambassador Program.
We have many exciting articles planned for this column in future issues. Anyone who would like to contribute to the “Young Professionals” column or has any suggestions on the topics of interest, please contact me at cjreddy@ieee.org. Follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/ieee-aps-yp for the latest updates and events that are of interest to AP-S YPs.
The call for nominations is scheduled to open in July with the deadline to submit nominations by the end of October of the same year. To be eligible, the candidate should be an AP-S member; belong to the IEEE YP group as defined by IEEE (IEEE Members and volunteers who have graduated from their first professional degree within the past 15 years); and have five years or more experience reflecting professional maturity. The call for candidates will open once a year, and ambassadors are selected for a term of one year. The one-year term of the selected candidate starts from January of the following year. All new ambassadors are required to give at least two talks during their tenure of one year.
The AP-S YP Subcommittee was formed and chaired by Qammer H. Abbasi (with members Nelson Fonseca, Asimina Kiourti, Debdeep Sarkar, and Jiang Zhu) to manage the nomination and selection process of the YP ambassadors. Each candidate was asked to submit a nomination package with four mandatory files to the chair, including a resume (two pages maximum); the title(s) of the maximum two talks; a brief writeup on the benefits of the talk proposed to the AP-S YP community; and a 5-min short video sample of any proposed talk. Using the nomination package, each candidate was reviewed by two independent subcommittee members and given a score against three criteria, i.e., presentation skills (35%); a growing trajectory of accomplishment in the field of antennas and propagation (35%); and the quality and relevance of the proposed lectures to the YPs (30%). The final weighted average score for each candidate was compiled, and the selected candidate’s nomination was put forward to the AP-S YP Committee for the approval of the final candidate list based on the score.
For the year 2022, a total of 12 ambassadors were selected [1], and they are shown in Figure 1. They successfully gave more than 50 talks virtually at various IEEE Sections and AP-S Chapters across the world. The distribution of their talks at Chapters in various countries is shown in Figure 2. In addition, the ambassadors led various activities at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation held in Denver, CO, USA (10–15 July 2022) [2]. They also contributed to the AP-S Educational Resource Center [3], [4], [5].
Figure 1. The 2022 AP-S YP ambassadors.
Figure 2. The distribution of talks given by 2022 AP-S YP ambassadors across the world.
The AP-S established a new award called the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Young Professional of the Year Award to recognize one YP member of the AP-S for significant service to the AP-S during the one-year term as an AP-S Young Ambassador, which includes: 1) the number of technical and nontechnical talks at IEEE Sections and AP-S Chapters as well as the quality of the talks and visibility and attendance of the talks and 2) participation in other YP activities, including the organization of YP events. This award carries a cash prize of US$2,000 and will be presented at the annual IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation. More details are in [6].
We received in total 26 nominations from more than 10 countries with candidates from academia, government labs, and industry. We selected the top 10 candidates as 2023 AP-S YP ambassadors. These included ambassadors from seven countries (Australia, China, Denmark, Ireland, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States); three women; and two ambassadors from government labs. Here, we present the list of the 10 selected AP-S YP ambassadors for 2023, sorted alphabetically according to their last names [7].
Hasan Abbas
Lecturer, James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, U.K.; e-mail: hasan.abbas@glasgow.ac.uk; website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/engineering/staff/hasanabbas/; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hasantahirabbas/.
Talk 1: Electromagnetic Methods at the Nanoscale—Current State of the Art
Talk 2: Application of Nanoscale Electromagnetics in Biomedical Applications
Gangil Byun
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea; e-mail: byun@unist.ac.kr; website: http://byun.unist.ac.kr; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylebyun.
Talk 1: Huygens’ Metasurfaces for Wide-Angle Refraction: Theory, Design, Analysis, and Physical Implementation
Talk 2: Recent Advances in Display-Integrated Millimeter Wave Antennas
Sumitra Dey
Talk 1: Relevance of Characteristic Mode Analysis in Plasmonic Material-Based Nanoantenna Optimization
Talk 2: Multiscale Modeling of Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Nanocomposites: Opportunities and Challenges
Wei Fan
Associate Professor and Head of Wireless Propagation and Over-the-Air Testing Research Group, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark; e-mail: wfa@es.aau.dk; website: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/125814; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weifan1987/.
Talk 1: Radio Channel Sounding, Modeling, and Emulation for 5G and Beyond Systems
Talk 2: Over-the-Air Testing (OTA) of 5G Radios: Principles and Challenges
Gaurangi Gupta
Postdoctoral Researcher, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech, CA, USA; e-mail: gaurangi.gupta@jpl.nasa.gov; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurangigupta25/.
Talk 1: Innovative Antenna Solutions for Satellite Telecom, Radio Telescope, and Radars
Talk 2: Lunar Crater Radio Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon
Hui Li
Professor, School of Information and Communication Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, China; e-mail: hui.li@dlut.edu.cn; website: http://faculty.dlut.edu.cn/huili/en/index.htm; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hui-li-78ba95257/.
Talk 1: Theory of Characteristic Mode and Its Application in Antenna Design
Talk 2: Designing Multiple Antennas in Terminal Devices
Saptarshi Mukherjee
Research Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA, USA; e-mail: mukherjee5@llnl.gov; website: https://people.llnl.gov/mukherjee5; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saptarshi-mukherjee-5a55bb7a/.
Talk 1: Electromagnetic Diagnostics for In-Situ Metal Additive Manufacturing
Talk 2: Electromagnetic Nondestructive Evaluation: Breaking the Diffraction Limits
Syed Akbar Raza Naqvi
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, the University of Queensland, Australia; e-mail: s.naqvi@uq.edu.au; website: https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/33730; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syed-akbar-raza-naqvi/.
Talk 1: Dielectric Properties of Healthy Human Skin and Challenges Toward Dermal Anomaly Detection Using Electromagnetic Techniques
Talk 2: Skin Cancer Detection: Feasibility Study Across the Microwave Frequency Band
Adam Narbudowicz
Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland; e-mail: narbudoa@tcd.ie; website: https://connectcentre.ie/people/Adam-Narbudowicz; LinkedIn: https://connectcentre.ie/people/Adam-Narbudowicz.
Talk 1: Securing IoT: Antennas as Padlocks, Propagation as a Key
Talk 2: Machine Learning + mm-Waves = Biodiversity Sensor
Chaoyun Song
Assistant Professor, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, U.K.; e-mail: c.song@hw.ac.uk; website: https://sites.google.com/view/chaoyunsong/home; LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaoyun-song-b3925386/.
Talk 1: “Magic” Antenna Engineering for Sustainable, Flexible, and Stretchable Electronics
Talk 2: How to Address the Net Zero Target via Rectifying Antennas?
All AP-S Chapter chairs are encouraged to contact the AP-S YP ambassadors directly to invite them to deliver a talk or speak at an event. Chapter chairs can also contact Qammer H. Abbasi, subcommittee chair, at: qammer.abbasi@glasgow.ac.uk.
Qammer H. Abbasi (qammer.abbasi@glasgow.ac.uk) is a reader with the James Watt School of Engineering, deputy head of the Communication Sensing and Imaging group and deputy theme lead, Quantum and Nanotechnology at the Advance Research Centre, both at the University of Glasgow, G41 3TY Glasgow, U.K. He received the Sensor 2021 Young Scientist Award. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and subcommittee chair of the IEEE YP Ambassador Program.
[1] Q. H. Abbasi, “AP-S young professional ambassador program [Young Professionals] ,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 79–105, Apr. 2022, doi: 10.1109/MAP.2022.3145720.
[2] M. Khan, W. Lin, and J. Quimby, “AP-S young professionals activities at the 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation [Young Professionals] ,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 64, no. 6, pp. 108–111, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1109/MAP.2022.3212269.
[3] E. Heinrich and A. Laue, “IEEE AP-S young professional ambassador talk: From old to new: How to properly apply novel ideas to a conventional research domain—The case of compressive antenna arrays,” in Proc. Resour. Center Antennas Propag. Soc., May 2022. [Online] . Available: https://resourcecenter.ieeeaps.org/education/rf-and-microwave-systems/APSRFMIC0020.html
[4] D. Inserra, “IEEE AP-S young professional ambassador talk: Radiative wireless power transfer with microwave and mm-Wave: Is there anything concretely possible with this technology?” in Proc. Resour. Center Antennas Propag. Soc., Jun. 2022. [Online] . Available: https://resourcecenter.ieeeaps.org/education/rf-and-microwave-systems/APSRFMIC0030.html
[5] A. Lakhtakia, M. Khan, W. Lin, and C. J. Reddy, “Interview with 2022 IEEE AP-S distinguished achievement award winner, Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia,” in Proc. Resour. Center Antennas Propag. Soc., Sep. 2022. [Online] . Available: https://resourcecenter.ieeeaps.org/professional-development/interviews/APSPDINT0000.html
[6] “IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society young professional of the year award,” in Proc. IEEE Young Prof. Antennas Propag. Soc., 2023. [Online] . Available: https://ieeeaps.org/committees/ypa
[7] “2023 IEEE AP-S YP ambassadors,” in Proc. IEEE Young Prof. Antennas Propag. Soc., 2023. [Online] . Available: https://ieeeaps.org/committees/2023ypa
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MAP.2023.3240067