Nuno Borges Carvalho
One of this year’s plans was to engage more microwave enthusiasts in our Society. With increased engagement, a significant increase in our membership is foreseen, and the IEEE Microwave and Technology Society (MTT-S) is working to improve the benefits given to its members by creating packages of educational resources for students but also to provide technical activities to engineering practitioners in microwave/wireless technologies.
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.
One of these ways to engage our membership is through our Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (DML) program, where Chapters around the world can have a keynote speaker present at their location, all with the financial support of the MTT-S. There are currently a total of 15 DMLs who are well-known experts in several areas; the complete list can be found at https://mtt.org/distinguished-microwave-lecturers-2024/. For 2024, four new DMLs will be a part of our team: Negar Ebadi, with her talk on “Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Using Wearable and Non-Contact Sensors;” Mark Rodwell, with his talk on “100–300-GHz Wireless: Transistors, ICs, Systems;” Cristiano Tomassoni, with a discussion on “Additive Manufacturing: Emerging Opportunities for Microwave Components;” and Qiaowei Yuan, with a talk focusing on “A Universal Calculation Method for Mimo-WPT Power Transfer Efficiency.” These MTT-S DML speakers (see Figure 1) will be joining the DML team and giving their inaugural speech at the next Radio and Wireless Symposium in January 2024 in San Antonio, Texas, USA. For more information, visit https://www.radiowirelessweek.org/.
Figure 1. The 2024 new DML speakers. From left: Negar Ebadi, Mark Rodwell, Cristiano Tomassoni, and Qiaowei Yuan.
In 2024, a new program will involve Inter-Society Distinguished Lecturers (ISDL), who will also be traveling to our Chapters to give their talks. The first ISDL, Piero Angeletti, will present his talk on “Multibeam Antennas and Beamforming Networks” (see Figure 2). The MTT-S and IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) will share this DIL, leveraging the sister society agreement signed in June at our Administrative Committee (AdCom) meeting. This relationship also enabled the MTT-S president and the MTT-S Intersociety Committee chair to be present at the AP-S AdCom meeting in July 2023 in Portland, Oregon, USA (see Figure 3).
Figure 2. Piero Angeletti, the first Intersociety MTT-S/AP-S Distinguished Lecturer Program speaker.
Figure 3. The AP-S AdCom meeting in Portland, Oregon, USA.
The Education Committee also has an exciting program for microwave lecturers with the Distinguished Microwave Instructor (DMI) program, where several microwave instructors share their extraordinary enthusiasm virtually with our Chapters, universities, and industry colleagues. For more information about the fourth 2023 DMI program, visit https://mtt.org/dmi-workshops-2023/. An announcement for the program is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. The fourth IEEE MTT-S DMI Workshop.
Our membership engagement also helps local Chapters promote local workshops, which is a significant opportunity to increase awareness of the microwave community in your area. These workshops can be technically and financially sponsored by the MTT-S, which is a great way to promote activities in your Region, engaging both members and nonmembers to join our activities. More information can be found at https://mtt.org/chapters-overview/. At the local level, these programs also complement the Speaker’s Bureau program, where well-known researchers can travel to your location if the travel is within the same Region. For more information on the Speaker’s Bureau and the speakers, visit https://mtt.org/speakers_bureau/.
I encourage you to visit our website at https://www.mtt.org for more information about the MTT-S and its volunteer opportunities.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3305084