SpectrumX leadership participate in URSI National Radio Science Meeting

In early January, radio science researchers from across the United States and beyond came together for the National Radio Science Meeting (NRSM) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The meeting was attended by six SpectrumX members, who hosted workshops and participated in multiple panel discussions. The NRSM is sponsored by the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Radio Science.

Rafael A. Rodríguez Solís

Rafael Rodriguez Solis is currently a Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.

His main interests are wideband and tunable microwave and millimeter-wave antennas and circuits, in particular for communication, radar, and body area network systems. He is the UPRM PI for the NOAA Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST), the director of the UPRM Microwave and Millimeter-wave Systems Laboratory and the Institute of Research in Integrative Systems and Engineering (IRISE), and the coordinator for the UPRM Applied Electromagnetics Laboratory.

At this time, Rafael is working on the development of antennas for body-centric wireless communications, in the development of weather nowcast services for renewable energy applications, and in the development of compact microwave sensors for small UAVs. He is a senior member of the IEEE (Antennas and Propagation Society, Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, and Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society).

Bobby Weikle

Robert M. Weikle, II received his B.S. in electrical engineering and physics from Rice University in 1986, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1987 and 1992, respectively. At Caltech, he developed a variety of new techniques for realizing and modeling arrays of coupled nonlinear active devices for microwave/millimeter-wave power combining. For this work, he shared the 1993 IEEE Microwave Prize. During 1992, Dr. Weikle was a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Applied Electron Physics at Chalmers Tekniska Hogskola in Goteborg, Sweden where he
worked on millimeter-wave amplifiers based on high electron mobility transistors and low-noise terahertz mixers using superconducting hot electron bolometers.

In January 1993, Dr. Weikle joined the faculty of the University of Virginia where he is currently Professor in the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. During this time, he has built a laboratory for millimeter and submillimeter-wave device characterization, circuit design, prototyping, and metrology and has pursued research on millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave electronics, devices, and systems. Among his groups’ research efforts are design and fabrication techniques for submillimeter-wave integrated circuits, heterogenous integraton of III-V semiconductor devices with micromachined silicon, investigation of measurement instrumentation and calibration techniques for terahertz device and circuit characterization (including micromachined probes for submillimeter-wave on-wafer measurements), and research on planar antennas and quasi-optical components for millimeter-wave imaging and power-combining.

In 2011, Dr. Weikle co-founded Dominion Microprobes, Inc., with colleagues Scott Barker and Arthur Lichtenberger, to develop on-wafer probe technologies for terahertz measurements. He currently serves at its Chief Technology Officer.

Awards

  • IEEE Microwave Prize1993
  • David A. Harrison III Award, University of Virginia1999
  • All-University Teaching Award, University of Virginia 2001
  • Faculty Educational Innovation Award, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia 2015
  • Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award, University of Virginia 2016

Research Interests

  • Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Electronics
  • Wireless and Optical Communication Systems

Steven M. Bowers

Steven M. Bowers received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, in 2007, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in millimeter- wave circuits and systems from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2009 and 2014, respectively. In August 2014, he joined the faculty of the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include holistic integration of high-frequency analog circuits, advanced digital circuits, novel electromag- netic structures and integrated silicon photonics to enable the next generation of millimeter-wave applications, specifically in adaptive and self-healing millimeter-wave circuits and millimeter-wave power generation, radiation, and detection.

Dr. Bowers is a member of IEEE HKN and TBP. He was the recipient of the California Institute of Technology’s Institute Fellowship (2007), the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award (2009), the IEEE RFIC Symposium Best Student Paper Award (2012), the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Best Student Paper Award (2013), and the 2015 IEEE MTT-S Microwave Prize.

Education:

B.S. ​University of California, San Diego, 2007

M.S. California Institute of Technology, 2009​

Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 2014

Post-Doc California Institute of Technology, 2013-2014​

Awards:

  • IEEE MTT-S Microwave Prize, 2015
  • IEEE International Microwave Symposium Best Student Paper Award, 2013
  • IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Conference Best Student Paper Award, 2012

Research Interests:

  • Internet of Things
  • Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Electronics
  • Low Power Design

Gerhard Schoenthal

Gerhard received his BS in Physics from the US Naval Academy in 1992 and his Ph D. in Physics from the University of Virginia in 2003. After graduating from the Naval Academy, Gerhard served on active duty in the US Navy for 5 years. After graduate school, he worked as a Senior Process Engineer at Intel PTD in 2003 and 2004. For the past 16 years, he has served in many roles at Virginia Diodes, Inc. the world’s leading mmWave and THz test and measurement and components company. He is currently the Chief Operations Officer.

Arthur Lichtenberger

Dr. Arthur Lichtenberger is a Research Professor at the University of Virginia in Electrical and Computer Engineering and the NRAO Director of the UVA Microfabrication Laboratories (UVML). He received a BA from Amherst College in 1980 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UVA in 1985 and 1987 respectively. He has built an internationally recognized research program in superconducting materials, devices, circuits and packaging for ultra-sensitive single pixel and array THz detectors, having collaborated with astronomical groups for the past 25 years to develop state of the art millimeter and submm wavelength mixers for use on radio telescopes throughout the world. His group’s research, in collaboration with professors Barker and Weikle, also includes the investigation of materials and microfabrication technologies for new terahertz devices, circuits and metrology. To date, he has been PI or Co-PI on over 25 million dollars of funding and an author on over 150 papers. He is a founding member, and the president and COO of Dominion MicroProbes Inc. He obtained $9.05M from internal UVA funds for the renovation of the UVML cleanroom in 2017, and was the PI on a 2017 UVA  Strategic Investment Fund award (Multifunctional Materials Integration Facility Launch) for $10M.

Education:

B.S. ​Physics, Amherst College, 1980

M.S. ​Electrical Engineering, University of Virginia, 1985

Ph.D. ​Electrical Engineering, University of Virginia, 1987

Awards:

  • Co-Winner of the UVA Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award (with Barker, Weikle and Hossack), 2016
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Leadership Award, 2017

Research Interests:

  • Superconducting materials and devices
  • MM-wave and THz devices, circuits and metrology

Jeffrey Hesler

Jeffrey L Hesler is the Chief Technology Officer of Virginia Diodes and has a visiting position at the University of Virginia. For more than 25 years he has been working on creating new technologies that utilize the Terahertz (THz) frequency band for scientific, defense, and industrial applications. He has published over 200 technical papers in journals and international conferences proceedings, is a member of IEEE Technical Committee MTT-21 (THz Technology and Applications) and is a co-Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology. Terahertz systems based on his innovative designs are now used in hundreds of research laboratories throughout the world.

Zoya Popovic

Prof. Popovic advises on research in areas of high-efficiency linear and broadband microwave power amplifiers, low-loss broadband microwave and millimeter-wave circuits and antennae, millimeter-wave and THz quasi-optical techniques, active antenna arrays, wireless powering for low-power sensors and high-power wireless near-field charging, microwave applications in medicine such as high-field MRI and core body temperature measurements, microwave heating for waste management and Rydberg atom microwave and millimeter-wave quantum sensors.

Distinguished Professor • Lockheed Martin Endowed Chair in RF Engineering

ELECTROMAGNETICS, RF & MICROWAVES

Scott Barker

N. Scott Barker received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Virginia in 1994 and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1996 and 1999 respectively.

In 1999 he joined the Naval Research Laboratory as a staff scientist in the Microwave Technology Branch. He is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. His research interests include applying MEMS and micromachining techniques to the development of millimeter-wave and terahertz circuits and components. He has over 100 publications and several patents in this field. In 2011 he co-founded the company Dominion MicroProbes, Inc., to develop and market THz frequency technology co-invented by his group at the University of Virginia, including 500-750 GHz and 750-1100 GHz on-wafer probes.

Prof. Barker has served on the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques technical committee on RF-MEMS (MTT-21) since 2000 and was the committee chair from 2008 to 2011. He has also served on the IMS Technical Program Review Committee since 2001. He served on the Steering Committee of IMS2011 in Baltimore, was the TPC co-chair for IMS2014 in Tampa, FL, and is Co-General Chair for IMS2024 in Washington, D.C. He served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques from 2010 to 2013 and was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters from 2016-2018. He is currently the Chair of the MTT-S Publications Committee.

Prof. Barker received the 2016 Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award, the 2012 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award in 2015, the New Faculty Teaching Award in 2006 and the Faculty Innovation Award in 2004. He is an IEEE Fellow, a recipient of the 2003 NSF CAREER Award, and was awarded the 2000 IEEE Microwave Prize for his work on RF-MEMS Phase Shifters.

Education:

B.S. ​University of Virginia, 1994

M.S. ​University of Michigan, 1996

Ph.D. ​University of Michigan, 1999

Awards:

  • IEEE Fellow, 2018
  • Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award, UVA Licensing & Ventures Group, 2016
  • Outstanding Teacher Award, Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2015
  • Outstanding Young Engineer Award, IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S), 2012
  • Microwave Prize, 2000

Research Interests:

  • Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Electronics
  • Radio-Frequency Microelectromechanical Systems (RF-MEMS)
  • Wireless and Optical Communication Systems