Nuno Borges Carvalho
IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHING
From my perspective in June 2023, the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) is a vibrant Society, with many activities ongoing related to our technical field. Several conferences have occurred with a significant impact on our members; those include the International Microwave and Antenna Symposium (IMAS), in Cairo, Egypt (Figure 1); the IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference, in Florida, USA; the IEEE Texas Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems, in Texas, USA; the IEEE MTT-S International Wireless Symposium, in Qingdao, China; and the IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity, in Aveiro, Portugal. For June, we have an entire month of events, including the brand-new Wireless Power Transfer and Exhibition, in San Diego, CA, USA; the IEEE RF Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium; our flagship conference, the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium; and the Automatic Radio Frequency Techniques Group Microwave Measurement Conference, all co-located in San Diego. At the end of the month, the International Conference on Numerical Electromagnetic and Multiphysics Modeling and Optimization will be held in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. At all these events, we have a vibrant number of Young Professionals (YPs) events planned along with our industry colleagues, creating an excellent opportunity for academic, industry, and government interaction, impacting the future of microwaves and technology worldwide.
Figure 1. The IMAS closing session in Egypt, at our first international microwave and antennas conference in Africa.
An example of the vibrancy of the MTT-S was our support of the first IMAS conference in Africa (Figures 1 and 2), an event full of technical discussions and sessions devoted to IEEE activities on having engineering value the knowledge of local communities and the resulting impact on society. This conference combined microwaves and antennas, a relationship that builds bridges to help foster collaborative technology activities worldwide. In Figure 2, the president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), Stefano Maci; the past president of the MTT-S, Rashaunda Henderson; and the current MTT-S president, Nuno Borges Carvalho, met at a social event, representing our long tradition of collaboration among our Societies.
Figure 2. The IMAS social event. From left: MTT-S Past President Rashaunda Henderson, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society President Stefano Maci, and MTT-S President Nuno Borges Carvalho.
This relationship among Societies was even more visible at the February IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) Division IV meeting. All Division IV Societies (electromagnetic oriented) and councils joined to discuss their everyday activities (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The IEEE Division IV TAB meeting.
IEEE Division IV includes the following Societies: the AP-S, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, IEEE Consumer Technology Society, IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society, IEEE Magnetics Society, MTT-S, and IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. It also includes the IEEE Council on RFID and IEEE Council on Superconductivity.
This month, two of our MTT-S Administrative Committee (AdCom) ad hoc committees that illustrate our Society’s vitality and future are presented: the YPs Committee and the Industrial Engagement Committee.
Over the past several years, the MTT-S has strongly supported our YP community, which has grown by 50%. There is a parallel effort to include YPs’ experience and input across the AdCom. In addition to the traditional YP programs (often composed of networking and/or dedicated sessions) at our sponsored conferences, we have launched the MTT-S Affiliate Initiative, giving YPs unprecedented access to technical committees at the start of their career, be it academic, industry or government, as a nonvoting member.
Throughout this year, we have continued to expand our community reach by launching a Student Ambassador Program and putting our YPs in the spotlight with the new Distinguished YPs in Microwaves program, and we are further developing our volunteers with training, our under(graduate) student members with educational content, and our members with senior membership elevation support. Reach out to us at mtt-yp@ieee.org and meet our team of regional coordinators.
The chair of the YPs Committee, Sara Pena Barros (Figure 4), was born and raised in Portugal and The Netherlands and received her M.Sc. degree in electronics engineering and telecommunications in 2013, having spent her first three undergraduate years at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and her final two years at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Her studies were completed with a full-year research project, “OFDM for Data Distribution in Phased Array Antennas,” in collaboration with Thales Nederland, for which a patent application was filed. After graduating, she continued with the company and joined its Surface Radar—Strategy, Technology, and Innovations group, in Delft, The Netherlands, as an advanced development engineer. There, she is involved in low-TRL research activities related to the development of advanced waveform concepts and novel radar technology, and she also leads and contributes to integrated topside design studies for several naval customers worldwide. She has been an active IEEE volunteer for the past 14 years. She has acted as the YPs Committee chair, MTT-S Region 8 Chapter coordinator, and IEEE Region 8 membership development past chair.
Figure 4. Sara Pena Barros, chair of YPs Committee.
Recently, an AdCom ad hoc Industry Engagement Committee (IEC) was created to address the needs of industry professionals in the field of megahertz (MHz)-to-terahertz (THz) RF photonics. The industry presence at MTT-S events needs to improve. The declining industry presence and participation in MTT-S events may create a technological and financial threat to the Society’s charter and strategic goals. Increased industry engagement would also provide an opportunity to create new offerings attracting professionals from industry.
To create an industry-friendly environment at MTT-S events, the IEC was formed. The current committee roster includes members from around the world. The committee will work toward identifying industry gaps and opportunities to facilitate MTT-S-related industry engagement activities. Following the IEC charter, the committee will recommend developing services that will satisfy the needs of industry and government participants working in the MHz-to-THz to RF photonics field. The committee will also work with other MTT-S organizations and committees to create a strategic plan and develop various offerings and events addressing professional industry needs. The IEC will also coordinate with other IEEE Societies in collaboration with MTT-S Inter-Society Committee.
The IEC activities kicked off with a meeting in January 2023 during AdCom Annual Meeting 1, in Las Vegas, NV, USA. During the Las Vegas meeting, the committee members brainstormed on the gaps and opportunities that the committee observed. The committee is finalizing the charter and goals to create industry-friendly activities at MTT-S events, in collaboration with other MTT-S organizations.
Debabani Choudhury will chair the IEC (Figure 5). She is with Intel Labs, the research division of Intel, where she directs the research and development on various platform-integrated RF-to-sub-THz communication and sensing technologies. She worked with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on THz devices and components for space-based heterodyne receiver applications. At Hughes Research Laboratories, HRL Labs, and Millitech, she developed various RF, millimeter-wave, THz, and optoelectronics technologies for space, defense, government, and automotive applications. She holds a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. She has a broad range of expertise in devices, circuits, antennas, arrays, systems, packaging, heterogeneous integration, electromagnetics, and platform integration technologies. She is an elected Fellow of IEEE, with more than 80 patents/patent applications along with numerous publications, and she received the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 2019 Best Paper Award. She received several NASA awards for her work on heterodyne receivers, devices, local oscillators, multipliers, and guided structures/integrated circuit modules developed for space and defense applications. She also received multiple Gordon Moore awards for research excellence at Intel.
Figure 5. Debabani Choudhury, chair of the IEC.
I encourage you to visit our website (https://www.mtt.org) for more information about the MTT-S and volunteer opportunities.
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.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3255648