Six trailblazing radar and microwave researchers shortlisted for £350,000 research prize

Six world-leading researchers who are pioneering the next generation of radar and microwave technologies – from radar sensors that provide off-body monitoring to tackling spectrum scarcity in an ever-increasing digital world – have been shortlisted as nominees for the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) prestigious £350,000 A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize.

The prize is awarded annually in recognition of an outstanding achievement in engineering research in the fields of medical, microwave and radar or laser/optoelectronic engineering, with the prize fund awarded to support further research led by the recipient.

This year’s theme is radar and microwave – the 2024 shortlist includes:

Sir John O’Reilly, Chair of the IET’s Search and Selection Panel for the Prize, said: “We’re incredibly proud, through the generous legacy from the late Dr A F Harvey, to be able to recognise and support the development of pioneering engineering research and the subsequent impact this has on advancing the world around us. I’d like to congratulate our six finalists for this year.”

The IET’s A F Harvey prize is named after Dr A F Harvey who bequeathed a generous sum of money to the IET for a trust fund to be set up in his name to further research in the specified fields.

The prize winner will be chosen from the shortlisted candidates and announced in January 2025 – the winning researcher will deliver a keynote lecture on their research in the spring.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Full bios of the Harvey Prize 2024 shortlist:

Professor Andrea Alù

Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, and the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received his Laurea and PhD from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until 2018. He is recognized for his transformative contributions to wave physics and engineering, in particular for his demonstrations of exotic wave phenomena in engineered materials, and their impact on technologies relevant to microwaves, optics and acoustics. He developed the first 3D metamaterial cloak, the first circulator for sound waves, the first demonstration of angular-momentum bias for magnet-free nonreciprocity, the first observation of time-reflections for electromagnetic waves, and of extreme nonlinearities in quantum-engineered metasurfaces. Dr Alù is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Materials Research Society, Optica, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, and the American Physical Society. He is a Highly Cited Researcher since 2017, a Simons Investigator in Physics, the director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena Based on Symmetries, and the Editor in Chief of Optical Materials Express. He has received several scientific awards, including the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, the Blavatnik National Award for Physical Sciences and Engineering, the Brillouin Medal, the IEEE AP-S Distinguished Achievement Award, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the ICO Prize in Optics, the Optica Max Born Award and Adolph Lomb Medal, the SPIE Mozi Award, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.

Professor Johannes Fink

Johannes Fink is professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). Born in Austria, Fink studied Physics at the University of Vienna. At ETH Zurich he conducted a PhD in the field of circuit quantum electrodynamics for which he was awarded the ETH Medal in 2010. He then became an IQIM postdoctoral scholar and a senior staff scientist in the department of applied physics at Caltech. In 2016 he started the Quantum Integrated Devices laboratory at ISTA. His team studies quantum coherent effects in superconducting, mechanical and optical chip-based devices with the goal to advance and integrate quantum technology for communication, simulation, sensing and metrology. During his PhD he observed the geometric phase and studied fundamental interactions between light and matter at microwave frequencies. As a postdoc at Caltech he developed a new electro-mechanics platform and demonstrated motional ground state cooling of a dielectric nanobeam. At ISTA his team used mechanical motion to realize an on-chip microwave circulator and to deterministically generate and distribute entangled microwave radiation. They used such states to implement a proof-of-principle quantum radar protocol and recently also succeeded in entangling microwaves and light for the first time.

Professor Changzhi Li

Changzhi Li received a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a Professor at Texas Tech University. His research interest is microwave/millimeter-wave radar sensing for healthcare, security, and human-machine interface. Dr Li is an MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer. He was a recipient of the IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the IEEE Sensors Council Early Career Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE-HKN Outstanding Young Professional Award and the ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award. He was the General Chair of the 2024 IEEE Radio & Wireless Week (RWW), and an Associate Editor of the IEEE JOURNAL OF ELECTROMAGNETICS, RF AND MICROWAVES IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY. He served as the chair of the MTT-S Technical Committee “Biological Effect and Medical Applications of RF and Microwave” from 2018 to 2019, the TPC Chair of the 2022 IEEE RWW, a TPC Co-Chair of the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Biomedical Conference from 2018 to 2019, and the TPC Chair of the IEEE Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference from 2012 to 2013. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Professor Jensen Li

Jensen Li is currently a Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) where he is the Director of the Centre for Metamaterials Research. He is best known for his work in carpet cloaking and his research group has been active in metamaterials research from microwave to optical frequencies, and from electromagnetic to acoustic domain. Metamaterials promise to provide exotic material properties based on tailor-made resonating micro-structures. Currently, there are two active approaches in adding new dimensions to metamaterials. One is through exploiting material gain and loss while another is through exploiting the time dimension. Professor Li’s interest is to develop the technologies required to construct metamaterials with both non-Hermiticity and time-varying capability by establishing the platforms in both electromagnetic and acoustic domains. The platforms will lead us to new physics and applications based on the unique capabilities of these metamaterials. During his tenure at HKUST, he has led 6 General Research Funds research grants and 1 Collaborative Research Grant from Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. He is an elected member of The Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Croucher Senior Fellowship 2022. Professor Li will join University of Exeter in Fall 2024.

Nils Pohl

Nils Pohl received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.Ing. degrees in electrical engineering from Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany, in 2005 and 2010, respectively.

From 2006 to 2011, he was a Research Assistant and subsequently from 2011 an Assistant Professor with Ruhr University Bochum. In 2013, he became the Head of the Department of mm-wave radar and high frequency sensors with the Fraunhofer FHR, Wachtberg, Germany. In 2016, he became a Full Professor of Integrated Systems with Ruhr University Bochum. He has authored or coauthored more than 250 scientific papers and has issued several patents. His current research interests include ultra-wideband mm-wave radar, design, and optimization of mm-wave integrated SiGe circuits and system concepts with frequencies up to 500 GHz and above, frequency synthesis, and antennas.

He is a Member of IEEE, VDE, ITG, EUMA, and URSI. He was the recipient of the Karl-Arnold Award of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts in 2013, and IEEE MTT Outstanding Young Engineer Award in 2018 and a co-recipient of the Best Demo Award at RWW 2015, Best Student Paper Awards at RadarConf 2020, RWW 2021, and EuMIC 2021, and Best Paper Awards at EuMIC 2012, of the AWPL in 2022 and of the SENSL in 2023.

Professor Dimitra Psychogiou

Dimitra received the Dipl.-Eng. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Switzerland. She is currently a Full Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University College Cork and the Head of the Advanced RF Technology Group at Tyndall National Institute, Cork Ireland holding the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Professorship. Her current research interests include RF design and characterization of reconfigurable microwave and millimeter-wave passive components, RF-MEMS, acoustic wave resonator-based filters, tunable filter synthesis, frequency-agile antennas, and additive manufacturing technologies for 3D antenna sub-systems. Her research has been presented in more than 250 publications and has received several awards, including the 2023 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, 2023 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the 2021 Roberto Sorrentino Prize, the SFI Research Professorship Award, the 2020 NSF CAREER Award and the 2020 URSI Young Scientist Award. Her students have also received numerous student awards and research-based fellowships. Dimitra is a Senior Member of IEEE and URSI and a member of the IEEE MTT-S Filters and Passive Components (MTT-5) and Microwave Control Materials and Devices (MTT-13) committees. She is currently serving as the President of URSI Ireland, the Vice-Chair of MTT-13 and the Secretary of USNC-URSI Commission D. She is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters and the International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies and is on the Technical Review Board of various IEEE and EuMA conferences.

About the IET

• We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community to engineer a better world.
• We are a diverse home for engineering and technology intelligence throughout the world. This breadth and depth means we are uniquely placed to help the sector progress society.
• We want to build the profile of engineering and technology to change outdated perceptions and tackle the skills gap. This includes encouraging more women to become engineers and growing the number of engineering apprentices.
• Interview opportunities are available with our spokespeople from a range of engineering and technology disciplines including cyber-security, energy, engineering skills, innovation, manufacturing, technology, transport and diversity in engineering.
• For more information, visit theiet.org
• Follow the IET on X.

Media enquiries to:

Rebecca Gillick
External Communications Manager
E: rgillick@theiet.org

Sophie Lockyer
Senior Communications Executive
E: slockyer@theiet.org