Jasmin Grosinger, Dan Jiao, Mona Jarrahi, Dominique Schreurs, Natalia Nikolova
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IEEE offers a Distinguished Lecturers Program, allowing Chapters to host distinguished lecturers who are excellent speakers and experts in their respective topical fields. Within the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S), this program is renamed the Distinguished Microwave Lecturers (DMLs) Program. In the summer of 2022, the MTT-S announced the DML class for 2023–2025. We observed that this was the 10th all-male class since 2009. In fact, there have been only five female DMLs since the 2009 class, including the present two female DMLs. A major reason is the lack of nominations of female candidates. The same observation is valid in terms of geographical diversity. Therefore, this column elaborates on the nomination process and shares the experiences of female DMLs.
To be considered as a candidate, you prepare, in consultation with your nominator, an application package and submit it by the annual DML Call deadline, typically in March. Your nominator can be an MTT-S Technical Committee (TC) chair, an AdCom member, or a Chapter chair. You can even nominate yourself; you can find more information on the DML website: https://mtt.org/dml-call-for-nominations/. The website includes the form to submit your application package.
Your application package should include a brief synopsis of your DML talk and its significant interest to MTT-S members and a broad audience, a statement on your presentation quality and style, and your nominator’s information. You also upload your CV, a set of sample slides, and a video of one of your talks, ideally related to the submitted DML presentation topic. With your application package, it is recommended to submit an endorsement letter by one or more of the MTT-S TCs; you can find a complete committee list at this link: https://mtt.org/technical-committee-chairs-listing/.
After evaluation of the submitted nomination packages, the DML Selection Committee creates a short list and interviews the finalists online. Be prepared to present your slides to the committee members. The interview will also cover aspects such as your motivation and your time commitment.
After the interviews, the DML Selection Committee converges on a recommended slate for the upcoming DML class, which is brought to the MTT-S AdCom for approval. This decision usually happens at the AdCom meeting in June, the weekend before the International Microwave Symposium. It is an open meeting, but if you cannot be there in person, it is usually possible to sign up to attend the meeting online (https://mtt.org/adcom-2023-meeting-dates-locations/). After the AdCom meeting, the DML Selection Committee chair will inform you about the results, and the term starts on 1 January of the following year for three years.
As a DML, you have the pleasure of presenting talks to local Chapters worldwide and serving as an ambassador for the MTT-S. You will travel to MTT-S Chapters or Joint Chapters with other IEEE Societies, Student Chapters, and IEEE Sections.
Your work starts with a DML training session at the AdCom meeting in January, the weekend before Radio & Wireless Week. The DML coordinator will inform you about online and onsite talks, your travel budget, and the travel reimbursement process at the training. You will also receive a list of contacts and representatives of Chapters who have indicated their interest in hosting you this year. You will then communicate with these representatives and the DML coordinator throughout the year to plan and schedule your talks.
We now share some experiences by former and present female DMLs. Natalia Nikolova was nominated as a DML in 2010 by TC MTT-15, which is now TC-1, Field Theory and Computational Electromagnetics. She served as a DML from 2011 to 2013, but she continued to give her DML lecture for many years afterward, the last being in October 2020. The lecture title was “Microwave Near-Field Imaging of Human Tissue: Hopes, Challenges, Outlook.” The TC chair at the time, Prof. D. Jackson, was very supportive, and without his strong encouragement, Natalia may not have considered the opportunity. All committee members were, in fact, incredibly enthusiastic about her talk, and they encouraged her to apply and offered valuable insight and advice.
The time commitment and the effort involved in putting together the proposal and the lecture, updating the lecture content and tailoring it to the specific audience every time, managing the trip logistics, and communicating with audiences before and after the talks, indeed looked overwhelming at the time. But with the support of her colleagues from the MTT-S, it all turned out to be a great experience from which she learned a lot. Natalia expanded her research network tremendously with colleagues worldwide and gained invaluable insights from the feedback she received from various audiences, the expertise of which varied widely. Her objective was to inspire the MTT-S community to pursue and expand research efforts toward making microwave imaging a clinically viable modality in medical diagnostics. It has been rewarding to see the rapid increase in the number of publications reporting high-impact research on the medical applications of microwaves and millimeter waves.
Dominique Schreurs was part of the 2012–2014 DML class with the talk “Towards Greener Smartphones With Microwave Measurements.” Before her nomination by MTT-11, the Microwave Measurements Committee, now called TC-3, she was already serving as a Speakers Bureau speaker (SBS), in an internal MTT-S program to offer talks to Chapters within the SBS’s Region. In this framework, she performed several talks for Chapters throughout Europe, and this experience motivated her to agree being nominated as a DML. At that time, DML talks were all physical and were not yet a combination of physical and virtual talks, as we have today in the post-COVID era.
When she started as a DML, Dominique had already traveled multiple times to North America but never to Asia. Her trips to various Asian countries during the three-year term were very enriching regarding cultural experiences. The host chapters were very welcoming and often had students escorting her from the airport or hotel to the venue and back. She remembers the day when a professor asked a female student to show her around the campus. By the end of the tour, the walking group had increased to about a dozen female engineering students. The student had called all of her friends to talk to the European professor and to teach her to eat correctly with chopsticks. Dominique quickly realized the need to have multiple versions of her DML talk to accommodate the local Chapters in the best possible way. On one day, the attendees may be a large group of undergraduate students; another day, the group could mainly consist of MTT-S members working in the microwave industry. During these interactions with MTT-S members worldwide, the importance of the DML program to the local member communities became very clear, especially when it concerned locations where it is more challenging for members to travel overseas to the major microwave conferences. Was there any downside? Yes, there were cases when attendees enjoyed nice-smelling pizzas or other food while she was presenting the talk, and the DML knew lunch or dinner would not be until a couple of hours later.
DML talk by Jasmin in November 2022 at the Circuits, Devices, and High-Frequency IEEE San Diego Chapter.
Mona Jarrahi was nominated as an MTT-S DML in 2014 by the TC-21 Terahertz Technology and Applications Committee. Her DML term was from 2015 to 2017. The title of her DML lecture was “New Frontiers in Terahertz Technology.” During her term as a DML, she gave more than 40 talks in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, China, Italy, Taiwan, Switzerland, Australia, Finland, and Turkey. Her talk greatly assisted in introducing terahertz technology to the microwave community and the broader science and engineering communities.
Dan Jiao was nominated as an MTT-S DML in 2020 by TC-1 (Field Theory and Computational Electromagnetics), thanks to TC-1’s enthusiastic support. Her DML term is from 2021 to 2023. The title of her DML lecture is “Fast Solvers for Electromagnetics-Based Analysis and Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.” Because of the pandemic, her talks have been virtual and delivered to various IEEE MTT-S Chapters worldwide, from India to Malaysia, Mexico, Spain, Serbia, and Canada, among others. Despite the virtual format, the interaction with attendees is equally inspirational and mutually beneficial. Like the other DMLs, she revised her talks based on the audience’s background. Dan’s objective is to introduce state-of-the-art research in TC-1 to the broad microwave community, attract more people to pursue research in this area, and apply the research outcome to solve important science and engineering challenges.
Jasmin Grosinger started her DML career in 2022 in the Tatsuo Itoh DML Class of 2022–2024. Jasmin was nominated by an AdCom member and endorsed by three TCs. Her talk focuses on RF design for ultralow-power communication systems. You can find a 10-minute video here: https://www.mtt.org/profile/jasmin-grosinger/. Jasmin has already given several online and onsite talks, meeting exciting people worldwide and growing her network. She enjoys being a DML representing the MTT-S and is looking forward to lecturing over the next several years.
Dominique Schreurs is the corresponding author.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2022.3220038