Nuno Borges Carvalho
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Educators, students, Young Professionals (YPs), and engineers worldwide love to meet and discuss IEEE activities. The IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) is there to help when we discuss activities related to microwave theory and technologies.
In December, I was present as a speaker at the YP in Space event, which was organized in Sousse, Tunisia. Our colleagues there created a symposium dedicated to IEEE YPs, and they meet yearly. More than 1,100 YPs and students came from all parts of Tunisia to discuss topics related to IEEE, electrical engineering, and computer-based issues that are at the core of their discussions. Like any young team, they also network to celebrate technology. Figure 1 is a photo of the chair and cochairs of the IEEE Tunisian Students and Young Professionals.
This is where the future of our Society lies; it is essential to increase awareness of microwave engineering and increase our ability to educate students in areas that they usually consider complex but that can be transformed into exciting and enthusiastic topics that are simple to understand and unique and that can contribute to the advancement in human sustainability on Earth in a way that we cannot imagine. In the MTT-S, we have two committees that promote these activities in our community: the Education Committee and the Membership and Geographic Activities (MGA) Committee. This month’s focus is on those committees.
Nuno Borges Carvalho (nbcarvalho@ua.pt), 2023 MTT-S president, is with the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications, and Informatics, University of Aveiro, Aveiro 3810-193 Portugal.
In 2023, the Education Committee will continue the Distinguished Microwave Instructor (DMI) program to attract undergraduate students at the freshman/sophomore level. Three DMI workshops will be organized for 1) Regions 1–7 and 9; 2) Region 8; and 3) Region 10, respectively. It is expected that DMIs will travel to some universities to meet these undergraduate students. A new Ph.D. initiative was approved in 2022 to support early-stage Ph.D. students to attend MTT-S-sponsored conferences in 2023. The motivation is to help this group of students carry out quality future research. New science, technology, engineering, and mathematics activities to engage K-12 students will be proposed in 2023. In addition, low-cost portable vector network analyzers and test kits will be acquired from Amazon and distributed to MTT-S Chapters or Student Branches based on needs and requests. Finally, three ebooks focusing on tutorial topics will be published by the end of 2023.
The Education Committee will be chaired by Xun Gong (Senior Member of IEEE) (Figure 2). Xun received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2005. He is currently a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Central Florida and the director of the Antenna, RF, and Microwave Integrated Systems Laboratory.
Figure 1. The MTT-S president and the organizers of the IEEE Tunisian Students and Young Professionals and the YP in Space event. (From left): Nawres Ben Rhouma, Aziz Ben Kbaier, Nuno Borges Carvalho, and Ala Chalghaf.
Figure 2. Xun Gong, chair of the Education Committee in MTT AdCom.
He is an elected Administrative Committee (AdCom) member of the MTT-S for the period 2021–2023. He serves as the assistant treasurer and vice-chair of the Education Committee. He was appointed as the chair of the Education Committee in 2023. He previously served as the MTT-TC-5 chair (2021–2022) and vice-chair (2019–2020).
The MGA Committee is the interface between the MTT-S membership at large and the activities and leadership of the Society. The MTT-S has more than 250 Chapters all over the globe, and the MGA Committee, in coordination with the Chapter officers, helps plan for Chapter activities such as Distinguished Microwave Lectures; workshops; the Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT) events; YP and Women in Microwave (WiM) activities; and many others. In collaboration with the MTT-S Education Committee and Meetings and Symposium (M&S) Committee, the MGA Committee puts together different activities at conferences, such as YP and WiM programs; Ph.D. student initiatives; undergraduate and faculty activities; mentor/mentee programs; and others. Through the Ombuds Officer program, the MGA Committee also answers queries of general members regarding MTT-S activities. The MTT-S MGA Committee is the conduit through which the next generation of MTT-S leaders is identified and prepared for leadership roles. The leadership position at the Student Branch Chapters acts as another training ground for young students and professionals to be the technology leaders of the MHz to THz community.
This year, the MGA Committee will be chaired by Goutam Chattopadhyay (Figure 3). He is a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a visiting professor at the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Caltech in 2000. He is a Fellow of IEEE and IETE (India) and has been an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. His research interests include microwave, millimeter-wave, and terahertz receiver systems and radars and the development of space instruments to search for life beyond Earth. He has more than 350 publications in international journals and conferences and holds more than 20 patents. He also received more than 35 NASA technical achievement and new technology invention awards. He is an elected AdCom member of the MTT-S and currently chairs the MGA Committee. Before this, he was the chair of the M&S Committee and the assistant treasurer.
Figure 3. Goutam Chattopadhyay, chair of the MGA Committee in MTT AdCom.
I encourage you to visit our website (https://www.mtt.org) for more information about the MTT-S and volunteer opportunities.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2022.3233799