Featured Speakers

Abstract:

Now, more than ever, the development of trusted communications technologies supports the resiliency of the American economy. With expertise honed over decades of research in antennas and wireless propagation, materials science and electronics testing, as well as communications network protocols and standards, NIST’s Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL) serves as an independent, unbiased arbiter of trusted measurements and standards to government and industry.  This talk highlights the partnerships and R&D at NIST to ensure that next generation communication systems are secure, reliable, interoperable, and cutting edge.

Bio:

Marla Dowell is Director of the NIST Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL) and NIST Boulder Laboratory. NIST has a long role in advanced wireless communications going back over 100 years, to the development of the first radios running on AC electricity and radio triangulation techniques used during World War I. Today, NIST CTL serves as the leader for advanced communications standards and measurements, enabling dramatic changes in how consumers, manufacturers, governments, and others provide and consume information, transact business, provide and use essential services, among many other tasks. NIST CTL works closely with its partners in industry, academia, and across the federal government to address the insatiable societal demand for connectivity, one that requires significant advancements in communication technologies.

Dr. Dowell has served the broader NIST community as a member of the NIST Assessment Review Board, NIST Safety Council, and the NIST People Council. For over 15 years, she has served as a mentor in NIST leadership programs and has learned a great deal from mentees on the changing workforce needs. In addition, she has represented NIST on national and international standards committees for optics and photonics as well as external advisory committees on research innovation, photonics, and communications.

Dr. Dowell’s breadth of technical expertise and superior people management skills have been recognized by several prestigious awards: Department of Commerce Silver Medal, NIST Equal Employment Opportunity/Diversity Award, Judson C. French Award, Allen V. Astin Award, and the Arthur S. Flemming Award from George Washington University.

Dr. Dowell is a senior member of IEEE, as well as a member of AAAS, AAUW, APS, and SPIE.

Metamaterials has the capability of bending electromagnetic waves in new ways scientists could not do before. This presentation will present examples of possible ground breaking wave applications, as well as practical antenna solutions enabled by these metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Bio:

Erik Lier received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He started working as a research scientist at the university and later Electronics Laboratory (ELAB/SINTEF), carrying out national and international research on microwave antennas. He co-invented the concept of “Soft and Hard electromagnetic surfaces” which is related to the field of electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures and complex surfaces. He spent a year at UCLA as a visiting scholar. Since 1990 he has been with Lockheed Martin Space, where he has been involved in developing new spacecraft antennas and payload technologies. He has been instrumental in building up internal technology on shaped reflector and active phased array design and calibration. He has been involved in the development and modernization of the GPS satellite payload for 25 years. He was the phased array architect for two antenna payloads launched into space. He headed up the internal metamaterials research collaboration effort, including university collaboration, which has led to several groundbreaking and practical metamaterial-enhanced antennas for space and ground applications. He is granted 37 US patents, has authored and co-authored over 140 journal and conference papers, including two papers in the journal Nature, co-authored one book and authored a book chapter. He received the 2014 IEEE AP-S Harold A. Wheeler Applications Prize Paper Award. He is an IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer, a Lockheed Martin Senior Technical Fellow, a Life Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of IET.

Abstract:

Nowadays, the reduction of the time needed for acquiring the near-field data is an hot topic in the framework of the near-field to far-field (NF-FF) transformation techniques. Such an interest is confirmed by the growing number of published papers by authors working on such a topic. This reduction can be achieved either by lowering the number of the NF measurements and/or making faster their acquisition. A drastic reduction of the amount of needed NF measurements can be obtained by properly exploiting the spatial band-limitation properties of the radiated electromagnetic fields and their non-redundant sampling representations. Furthermore, the use of the optimal sampling interpolation expansions allow the accurate reconstruction of the large number of data required to perform a classical NF–FF transformation. To highlight the remarkable reduction of the sampling points, for example, a cylinder with infinite height could be fully scanned by requiring a finite set of data. Moreover, the acquisition of the NF data can be made faster by collecting them on the fly and adopting continuous and synchronized motions of the antenna under test and probe. Accordingly, effective non    redundant NF–FF transformations with helicoidal scanning, planar and spherical spiral scans have been proposed. The last but not the least characteristic is that non-redundant scanning acquisitions require the use of the same hardware of the classical scans, being enough only to modify the software of the controllers.

Bio:

Prof. Francesco D’Agostino was born in Rutino, Italy, in 1965. He received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering from the University of Salerno in 1994. Since the same year he has been with the Research Group in Applied Electromagnetics at the same University where in 2001 he received the Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering. From 2002 to 2005 he was Assistant Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Salerno where, in October 2005, he was appointed Associate Professor of Electromagnetics and joined the Department of Industrial Engineering, where he is currently working.

His research activity includes application of sampling techniques to electromagnetics and to innovative NF-FF transformations, diffraction problems, radar cross section evaluations, and Electromagnetic Compatibility. In this area, Dr. D’Agostino has co-authored 4 books and over 150 scientific papers, published in peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings. He serves as a regular reviewer for several journals and conferences and has chaired some international events and conferences. Dr. D’Agostino is a member of AMTA, the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and of the Italian Electromagnetic Society (SIEM).

Abstract:

Atom-based measurements allow for direct SI-traceable measurements, and as a result, measurement standards have evolved towards atom-based measurements over the last few decades. In the past 10 years, we have made great progress in the development of a fundamentally new direct SI-traceable approach based on Rydberg atoms (traceable through Planck’s constant). The Rydberg atom-based sensors now have the capability of measuring amplitude, polarization, and phase of the RF field. In this talk, I will lead us on a historical journey of the development of this approach, and in the process, I will summarize this work and discuss various applications.

Bio:

Dr. Christopher Holloway is a Fellow of the IEEE and has been at NIST for over 25 years. He is also on the Graduate Faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  He received his B.S.E degree from the University of Tennessee, and his Master and PhD degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  His is an expert in electromagnetic theory and metrology, quantum-optics, Rydberg-atom systems, and atom-based sensors.  He has a publication h-index of 55 with over 300 technical publications (including 143 refereed journal papers and 130 conference papers) and has over 12,000 citations of his papers. He also has 10 patents in various fields in engineering and physics. He is the Project Leader for the Rydberg-Atom-Sensor Project and is the Group Leader for the Electromagnetic Fields Group.