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  • Efficient 3D Molecular Structure Estimation with Electron Cryomicroscopy

    Room ENG106, Ryerson University

    November 12, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. Marcus Brubaker, Ph.D., will be presenting “Efficient 3D Molecular Structure Estimation with Electron Cryomicroscopy”. Speaker: Marcus Brubaker, Ph.D. Postdoctoral at University of Toronto Day & Time: Thursday, November 12, 2015 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Location: Room ENG106, Ryerson University 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3 Click here to see the Map – Look for ENG Organizer: Instrumentation & Measurement and Magnetics Chapters at IEEE Toronto Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour: maryam.davoudpour@ieee.org Abstract: Discovering the 3D structure of molecules such as proteins and viruses is a fundamental research problem in biology and medicine. Electron Cryomicroscopy (Cryo-EM) is a promising vision-based technique for structure estimation which attempts to reconstruct 3D structures from 2D images. This talk reviews the computational problems in Cryo-EM which are closely related to classical vision problems such as object detection, multiview reconstruction and computed tomography. Finally, a framework is introduced for reconstruction of 3D molecular structure which exploits modern methods for stochastic optimization and importance sampling. The result is a method which is efficient, robust to initialization and flexible. Biography: Marcus Brubaker received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 2011. After that he worked with Raquel Urtasun as a postdoctoral researcher at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago and is currently a postdoc at University of Toronto, Scarborough. He also consults with Cadre Research Labs on machine learning and computer vision related projects and teaches at the University of Toronto. He was won a number of fellowships and awards, including OGS and NSERC graduate fellowships as well as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. His most recent work on autonomous vehicle localization (“Lost! Leveraging the Crowd for Probabilistic Visual Self-Localization,” CVPR 2013) and the estimation of the 3D structure of proteins and viruses (“Building Proteins in a Day,” CVPR 2015) have won awards and attention in the lay press. His interests span computer vision, machine learning and statistics and he works on a range of problems including video-based human motion estimation, physical models of human motion, Bayesian inference, Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, ballistic forensics, electron cryo-microscopy and autonomous vehicle localization.

  • IEEE 5G Toronto Summit

    Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Toronto

    Recently, IEEE Communication Society has developed a strategic framework based on the principles that embrace Industry’s interests and priorities while integrating IEEE and ComSoc’s objectives. In order to engage industry members with high value and innovative technologies, IEEE Communication Society plans to hold a series of high impact one day Summits in emerging technology areas (e.g., SDN/NFV, 5G, IoT, Big Data, and Cybersecurity). The first summit was held at Princeton Univertity in May 2015 (see photos, slides, and videos).The upcoming IEEE Toronto 5G Summit is the second one in the series, and will be held at University of Toronto on Saturday, November 14, 2015. This one day summit will provide a platform for the industry leaders, innovators, and researchers from the industry and academic community to collaborate and exchange ideas in this emerging technology that may help in driving the standards and rapid deployment. The Summit is sponsored by IEEE Communications Society and co-sponsored by the IEEE Toronto Chapter. Keynote Speakers: Dr. Ivo Maljevic Telus Javan Erfanian Bell Canada Dr. Xavier Costa NEC Lab Europe Dr. Peiying Zhu Huawei Day & Time: Saturday, November 14, 2015 8:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. Location: Bahen Centre for Information Technology (BCIT), Auditorium BA1160 (1st floor) 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Building http://map.utoronto.ca/marker/bahen-centre Official Website & Registration: http://www.5gsummit.org/toronto/

  • Terrestrial Broadcast vs. LTE-eMBMS: Competition and Cooperation

    Room BA7180, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto

    Monday November 16, 2015 at 5:30 p.m. Marco Breiling, IEEE BTS distinguished lecturer, will be presenting “Terrestrial Broadcast vs. LTE-eMBMS: Competition and Cooperation”. Speaker: Marco Breiling IEEE BTS Distinguished Lecturer Chief Scientist of the Broadband & Broadcast (Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS), Germany Erlangen) Day & Time: Monday, November 16, 2015 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Location: Room BA7180 Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Organizer: IEEE Toronto Communications Society Contact: Eman Hammad, Email:eman.hammad.ca@ieee.org Abstract: While the broadcast world is reinforcing its armoury by introducing new and highly advanced standards like DVB-T2/-NGH and ATSC 3.0, the pressure by the mobile communications business is ever increasing. As users consume more unicast content or switch over to satellite TV or IPTV, the user base for terrestrial TV is shrinking, whereas the data rates requested by the users in mobile communications networks explode. Moreover, the mobile communications armoury now includes LTE-eMBMS as a broadcast mode, which can handle cases, where many users want to consume the same content. Consequently, the mobile network operators ask for a reallocation of the UHF broadcast bands to standards such as LTE (digital dividend II and more). If we assume that there is a future for broadcast over terrestrial transmission, this talk will shed some light about the question what technical (not commercial!) advantages conventional terrestrial broadcast standards like DVB have over eMBMS and vice versa. This leads to the question, whether the best aspects of both can be combined by having both networks cooperate. A final aspect discussed is the idea of distributing eMBMS content by satellite using, e.g., DVB-S2. Biography: After conducting studies at the Universität Karlsruhe/Germany (now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – KIT), the Norges Tekniske Høgskole (NTH) in Trondheim/Norway, the Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs en Electronique et Electrotechnique (ESIEE) in Paris and the University of Southampton/England, Marco Breiling graduated with a Dipl.-Ing. degree from KIT in 1997. He earned his PhD degree (with highest honor) for a thesis about turbo codes from Universität Erlangen/Germany in 2002. Since 2001, he has been working at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) in Erlangen in the field of satellite and terrestrial communications. He currently holds the position of the broadband & broadcast department’s chief scientist.

  • Novel Single-Source Integral Equation for Solution of Electromagnetic Scattering Problems on Penetrable Objects

    Room BA1210, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto

    Tuesday November 17, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. Vladimir Okhmatovski, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba, will be presenting “Novel Single-Source Integral Equation for Solution of Electromagnetic Scattering Problems on Penetrable Objects”. Speaker: Vladimir Okhmatovski Associate Professor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba Day & Time: Tuesday, November 17, 2015 4:00 p.m. Location: Room BA1210 Bahen Center for Information Technology 40 St. George Street, Toronto M5S2E4 Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Contact: Costas D. Sarris, Email:costas.sarris@utoronto.ca Abstract: A new Surface–Volume–Surface Electric Field Integral Equation (SVS-EFIE) is discussed. The SVS-EFIE is derived from the volume integral equation by representing the electric field inside the scatterer as a superposition of the waves emanating from its cross section’s boundary. The SVS-EFIE has several advantages. While being rigorous in nature, it features half of the degrees of freedom compared to the traditional surface integral equation formulations such as PMCHWT and it requires only electric-field-type of Green’s function instead ofboth electric and magnetic field types. The latter property brings significant simplifications to solution of the scattering problems on the objects situated in multilayered media. Both scalar and vector formulations of the SVS-EFIE equation has been developed for solution of 2D scattering problems on penetrable cylinders under TM and TE polarizations. The SVS-EFIE has been also been applied to the solution of the quasi-magneetostatic problems of current flow in complex interconnects in both homogeneous and multilayered media. Detailed description of the method of moment discretization and resultant matrices is discussed. Due to the presence of a product of surface-to-volume and volume-to-surface integral operators, the discretization of the novel SVS-EFIE requires both surface and volume meshes. In order to validate the presented technique, the numericalresults are compared with the reference solutions. Biography: Vladimir Okhmatovski received Ph.D. degree in antennas and microwave circuits from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Moscow, Russia in 1997. He was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the National Technical University of Athens from 1998 to 1999 and with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1999 to 2003. From 2003 to 2004, he was with the Department of Custom Integrated Circuits at Cadence Design Systems in Tempe, Arizona. In 2004, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, where is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests are the fast algorithms of electromagnetics, high-performance computing, modeling of interconnects, and inverse problems.

  • Compact Discrete Representations for Scalable Similarity Search

    Room ENG106, Ryerson University

    Thursday November 19, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. Mohammad Norouzi, PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Toronto, will be presenting “Compact Discrete Representations for Scalable Similarity Search”. Speaker: Mohammad Norouzi PhD Candidate Day & Time: Thursday, November 19, 2015 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Location: Room ENG 106 George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre Ryerson University 245 Church Street Toronto Organizer: IEEE Toronto Computer, Magnetics and Instrument-Measurement Chapters Contact: Maryam Davoudpour, Email:maryam.davoudpour@ieee.org Abstract: Scalable similarity search on images, documents, and user activities benefits generic search, data visualization, and recommendation systems. This talk concerns the design of algorithms and machine learning tools for faster and more accurate similarity search. The proposed techniques advocate the use of discrete codes for representing the similarity structure of data in a compact way. In particular, I will discuss how one can learn to map high-dimensional data onto binary codes with a metric learning approach. Then, I will describe a simple algorithm for fast exact nearest neighbour search in Hamming distance, which exhibits sub-linear query time performance. Going beyond binary codes, I will highlight a compositional generalization of k-means clustering which maps data points onto integer codes with storage and search costs that grow sub-linearly in the number of cluster centers. This representation improves upon binary codes, and provides an even more precise approximation of Euclidean distance. Experimental results are reported on multiple datasets including a dataset of SIFT descriptors with 1B entries. Biography: Mohammad Norouzi is a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Toronto. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning and computer vision. He is a recipient of a Google US/Canada PhD fellowship in machine learning. He is going to join Google as a research scientist in January 2016.

  • Intelligent Medical Devices for Affordable Healthcare

    Room ENG106, Ryerson University

    Monday November 23, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. Professor Dinesh Kumar, RMIT University of Melbourne, Australia will be presenting “Intelligent Medical Devices for Affordable Healthcare”. Speaker: Professor Dinesh Kumar RMIT University Melbourne, Australia Day & Time: Monday, November 23, 2015 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Location: Room ENG 106 George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre Ryerson University 245 Church Street Toronto Organizer: IEEE Toronto Signal Processing Chapter Contact: Sri Kirshnan, Email:krishnan@ryerson.ca Abstract: Technology is giving us longer and healthier lives. However, this comes at the cost, both, in terms of the research, infrastructure, and the cost of running the devices. Often, this makes many of these technologies only suitable for the wealthy societies. Prof Kumar will share his vision for devices and technologies for affordable healthcare. He will count the real cost of the devices, and suggest methods for making these more affordable without compromising the efficacy in improving the health outcomes. While automatic devices are often considered the demand of the wealthy, Kumar will show that these intelligent devices are the necessity for remote communities. Biography: Dr. Dinesh Kumar is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Kumar did his B.E (Hons) and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai and Delhi and has been researching in the field of developing affordable medical devices for 20 years. Dr. Kumar has been working towards developing intelligent devices and techniques that facilitate the user for early detection of disease, perform risk assessment of disease and provide assistive technologies for people who are frail or disabled. He has published over 350 refereed publications and his work has been cited over 5000 times.

  • Free Spectrum – Unlicensed Options

    Room ENG 460, Ryerson University

    Wednesday November 25, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. Dr. Srikanth will be presenting “Free Spectrum – Unlicensed Options”. Speaker: Dr. Srikanth CKO, Nanocell Networks AU-KBC Research Centre, MIT Campus, Chennai, India Ryerson Communications Lab Day & Time: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Location: Room ENG 460 245 Church St., Ryerson University, Toronto Organizer: IEEE Toronto Communications Society Contact: Eman Hammad, Email:eman.hammad.ca@ieee.org Abstract: The use of unlicensed bands by operators has been looming for quite some time with no clear approaches prevalent across the globe. Wi-Fi technologies have been thought of as the only way for operators to use unlicensed band due to its popularity in devices. Recently, many companies have evinced interested in standardizing LTE-technologies in the unlicensed bands as this can solve the teething problems with respect to using Wi-Fi based technologies. The reaction from the Wi-Fi camp has been a challenge as it views LTE-unlicensed solutions as disruption to their business. The carrier community prefers LTE-unlicensed solutions as it gives them better control over operations in unlicensed band apart from better performance. In this course, we shall introduce the various unlicensed options available to carriers and others. Topics to be covered: • Why unlicensed bands for service providers • Wi-Fi, its evolution and its role including Wi-Fi calling • LTE in unlicensed bands – motivation • LTE-U; key points • 3GPP LAA; key approaches and status • 3GPP LWA; LTE-Wi-Fi aggregation • Qualcomm MuLTEfire Biography: Srikanth obtained his B.E., degree from College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, and MASc and PhD degrees from University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He worked as a scientist at the KBC Research Foundation/AU-KBC Research Centre, in Chennai, India and most of his work is focused on OFDM based technologies. From 2004-2007 he was awarded a Young Scientist Fellowship by the Government of India to work on technologies related to upgrades on 802.11 and 802.16 standards. He has closely monitored the progress of the 802.11 and 802.16 standards and is familiar with the various proposals which were submitted for consideration for the 802.11n extension. He is currently the chief knowledge officer of nanocell networks and is also a consultant to Airtight Networks while being a visiting faculty at MIT, Chennai. He is a co-investigator of a research project funded by Govt. of India with faculty from IIT, Chennai and IIT, Mumbai Srikanth began his career as a research associate at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada working in the area of DSL and CDMA Systems. After this Ph. D., he joined Harris Corporation and worked on baseband algorithms for various wireless standards including IS-136 and 1S-95 systems. He has consulted on various areas of OFDM systems and has also been involved in the setting up of a test lab for 802.11. He has 3 US patents issued in the area of WLANs, OFDM, and OFDMA systems. Srikanth trains global teams of corporates on the latest WLAN, cellular standards, and IOT. He has also been involved in the IEEE WCET course book preparation.

  • A.I. is a half-truth without H.I.! POVAR and other examples of the Internet of Truth and Integrity for Consumer Electronics: See the invisible waves that see you!

    Room WI1017, Wilson Hall - New College (40 Willcocks Street, Toronto)

    Wednesday December 2, 2015 at 6:00 p.m. Steve Mann, University of Toronto Professor and Chief Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman’s School of Management, will be presenting “A.I. is a half-truth without H.I.! POVAR and other examples of the Internet of Truth and Integrity for Consumer Electronics: See the invisible waves that see you!”. Speaker: Steve Mann Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Departments University of Toronto Chief Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab Rotman’s School of Management Day & Time: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Location: Room WI1017, Wilson Hall – New College 40 Willcocks St, Toronto, ON M5S Building Map Link Registration: Please register at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ai-is-a-half-truth-without-hi-povar-and-other-examples-of-the-internet-of-truth-and-integrity-for-tickets-19671375614 Contact: nabavi@ieee.org To read the full presentation abstract see: http://wearcam.org/ConsumerElectronicsDec02.htm For more details on the guest speaker see: http://wearcam.org/bio.htm Abstract: Today’s technological advancements in Artifical Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things That Think (IoT and TTT) are rapidly changing the way consumers interact with technology. Gone are the days of open source and open box consumer electronics and in their place we are left with proprietary devices that are difficult to understand and copy. Steve suggests there are two major problems with this new technological way: (1) discouragement of the scientific method and (2) increased personal risk. These problems have led to a world where humans don’t realize the risks they face as they are unable to understand the fundamentals of their technology. Join us as Steve introduces a number of new concepts that will shed light on the technology we use in daily life. Biography: Steve Mann is widely regarded for his work on computation photography, particularly for wearable computing and high dynamic range imaging. As an inventor and visionary, his work established Toronto as the world’s epicenter of wearable technologies in the 1980s and led him to found MIT Media Lab’s Wearable Computing project. Steve received his PhD from MIT in 1997 and then returned to Toronto in 1998 where he is now a tenured full professor at the University of Toronto in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments. During his early years at University of Toronto, he created the world’s first Mobile Apps Lab (1999) as a part of his wearable computing and AR course. He is also the Chief Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman’s School of Management. Mann holds multiple patents, and has contributed to the founding of numerous companies including InteraXON, makers of Muse.

  • Connected Cars for Smart Cities

    Room ENG 288, Ryerson University, 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON

    Monday December 7, 2015 at 12:30 p.m. Shahrokh Valaee, Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, will be presenting “Connected Cars for Smart Cities”. Speaker: Shahrokh Valaee Professor, Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto Day & Time: Monday, December 7, 2015 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Location: Room ENG 288, Ryerson University George Vari Center for Engineering & Computing 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON Organizer: IEEE Toronto Computer, Magnetics and Instrument-Measurement Chapters Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour Abstract: Recently we are witnessing the emergence of situation-aware vehicles, equipped with plurality of sensors that can help driver with vehicle control and maneuvering. Cars that can park themselves, provide lane-departure warning, and monitor the driver alertness are marketed with affordable prices. The sensing and processing power of cars are increasing, enabling various safety-enhancing features, such as blind-spot warning, adaptive headlights, adaptive cruise control, and so on. In this talk, we will discuss the next steps for autonomous vehicles. In particular, we will project the path forward by transitioning from autonomous cars to cognitive and intelligent vehicles. Future cars will be enabled with car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication capabilities. We will review such enhancement and will focus on two recent research directives that will make future cars intelligent. The two enablers are compressive sensing and network coding. We will show that cooperative compressive sensing can reduce the wireless channel congestion, which is the main challenge in dense vehicular networks. To discuss the communications aspects of vehicular networks, we will introduce a repetition-based medium access control method using positive orthogonal codes, and then propose an opportunistic network-coding scheme to enhance the reliability of communication. We will finally discuss some open research issues. Biography: Shahrokh Valaee is with the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, where he is a Professor and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. He is the Founder and the Director of the Wireless and Internet Research Laboratory (WIRLab) at the University of Toronto. Professor Valaee recently served as the TPC Co-Chair of ICT 2015. He was the Track Chair of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2014, the TPC Co-Chair and the Local Organization Chair of IEEE Personal Mobile Indoor Radio Communication (PIMRC) Symposium 2011, and the Co-Chair for Wireless Communications Symposium of IEEE GLOBECOM 2006. From December 2010 to December 2012, he was the Associate Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters. Currently, he serves as an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Since Feb 2015 he has been an Editor of the Elsevier Journal of Computer and System Science. Professor Valaee is a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada.

  • Every Picture Tells a Story: Visual Cluster Assessment in Square and Rectangular Relational Data

    Room 1180, Bahen Center for Information Technology, University of Toronto

    Monday December 7, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. Professor Emeritus James Bezdek will be presenting “Every Picture Tells a Story: Visual Cluster Assessment in Square and Rectangular Relational Data”. Speaker: Emeritus James Bezdek Past President of NAFIPS, IFSA and the IEEE CIS Day & Time: Monday, December 7, 2015 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Location: Room 1180 Bahen Center for Information Technology 40 St. George Street, Toronto Organizer: IEEE Toronto Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter Distinguished Lecturer Program Contact: Lorenzo Livi, Email:llivi@scs.ryerson.ca Abstract: The VAT/iVAT, algorithms are the parents of a large family of visual assessment models. Part 1. Definitions of the three canonical problems of cluster analysis: tendency assessment, clustering, and cluster validity. History of Visual Clustering. Applications: role-based compliance assessment, eldercare time series data, and anomaly detection in wireless sensor networks. Part 2. Extension to siVAT, scalable iVAT for big data. This is the basis of clusiVAT and clusiVAT+ for clustering in big data (Topic 4 below). Application: image segmentation. Extension to coiVAT for assessment of co-clustering tendency in the four clustering problems associated with rectangular relational data. Application: response of 18 Fetal Bovine Serum Treatments to the treatment of fibroblasts in gene expression data. Biography: Jim received the PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in 1973. Jim is past president of NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society), IFSA (International Fuzzy Systems Association) and the IEEE CIS (Computational Intelligence Society): founding editor the Int’l. Jo. Approximate Reasoning and the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems: Life fellow of the IEEE and IFSA; and a recipient of the IEEE 3rd Millennium, IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Pioneer, and IEEE technical field award Rosenblatt medals. Jim’s interests: woodworking, optimization, motorcycles, pattern recognition, cigars, clustering in very large data, fishing, co-clustering, blues music, wireless sensor networks, poker and visual clustering. And of course, clustering in big data. Jim retired in 2007, and will be coming to a university near you soon.

  • Applications of Miniaturized-Element Frequency Selective Surfaces in Designing Microwave Lenses, Reflectarrays, and Polarization Converters

    Room BA1210, Bahen Center for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Toronto

    Friday December 11, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. Prof. Nader Behdad of University of Wisconsin – Madison, will be presenting “Applications of Miniaturized-Element Frequency Selective Surfaces in Designing Microwave Lenses, Reflectarrays, and Polarization Converters”. Speaker: Prof. Nader Behdad University of Wisconsin – Madison Day & Time: Friday, December 11, 2015 4:00 p.m. Location: Room BA1210, Bahen Center for Information Technology 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 2E4 Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics and Radiation Chapter Contact: Sean Victor Hum Abstract: Over the past several years, we have conducted research on a class of frequency selective surfaces with building blocks that consist of cascaded arrays of non-resonant, sub-wavelength periodic structures. Due to the small lateral dimensions and thicknesses of their unit cells, these structures are referred to as miniaturized-element frequency selective surfaces (MEFSSs). As spatial filters, MEFSSs can be designed to provide a wide range of response types with arbitrary levels of selectivity. MEFSSs capable of operating at extremely high incident power levels have also been developed and experimentally demonstrated for operation as spatial filters in HPM systems. Finally, MEFSSs having suppressed harmonics over extremely broad bandwidths have been developed for reduction of radar signatures of antennas and other objects. In addition to acting as spatial filters, the building blocks of MEFSSs can be used to serve other purposes as well. For example, by using the unit cells of a band-pass or a low-pass MEFSS as a spatial phase shifter or a spatial time-delay unit (TDU), wideband, true-time-delay lenses and reflectarrays may be designed. By using anisotropic versions of these spatial TDUs, wideband linear-to-circular polarization converters or polarization selective surfaces can be designed. In this presentation, I will first briefly discuss the principles of operation of MEFSSs and present examples of spatial filters developed for different applications. Subsequently, I will discuss three specific applications where the unit cells of MEFSSs are used as transmissive or reflective time-delay units. These include the development of wideband true-time-delay microwave lenses and reflectarrays as well as broadband linear-to-circular polarization converters designed using anisotropic time delay units. Biography: Nader Behdad received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in 2000 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.) in 2003 and 2006 respectively. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA, from 2006 to 2008, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA, from 2009 to 2013, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research expertise is in the area of applied electromagnetics with emphasis on electrically-small antennas, antenna arrays, antennas for biomedical applications, biomedical applications of RF/microwaves, periodic structures, frequency selective surfaces, passive high-power microwave devices, metamaterials, and biomimetics and biologically inspired systems in electromagnetics. Prof. Behdad was a recipient of the IEEE R. W. P. King Prize Paper Award in 2014, the IEEE Piergiorgio L. E. Uslenghi Letters Prize Paper Award in 2012, the CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2011, the Young Investigator Award from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2011, and the Young Investigator Award from the United States Office of Naval Research in 2011. He received the Office of Naval Research Senior Faculty Fellowship in 2009, the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 2008, the Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Michigan in 2005-2006, the best paper awards in the Antenna Applications Symposium in Sep. 2003, and the second prize in the paper competition of the USNC/ URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Boulder, CO, in January 2004. His graduate students were the recipients of the ten different awards/recognitions at the IEEE Pulsed Power & Plasma Science in 2013, IEEE AP-S/URSI Symposium in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014, and the Antenna Applications Symposium in 2008, 2010, and 2011. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters and served as the co-chair of the technical program committee of the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting.

  • The Wonderful World of Nonlinearity: Modeling and Characterization of RF and Microwave Circuits

    Room GB405, Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 1A4

    Monday January 18, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. Jose C. Pedro, Professor at the University of Aveiro, will be presenting a Distinguished Microwave Lecture, on “The Wonderful World of Nonlinearity: Modeling and Characterization of RF and Microwave Circuits”. Speaker: Jose C. Pedro University of Aveiro Day & Time: Monday, January 18, 2016 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Location: Room GB405, Galbraith Building 35 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 1A4 Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics and Radiation Chapter Contact: George V. Eleftheriades Abstract: Despite the many studies that have been undertaken to understand the wonderful world of nonlinearity, most undergraduate electrical engineering programs are still confined to linear analysis and design tools. As a result, the vast majority of microwave designers still cannot profit from the significant technological advancements that have been made in nonlinear circuit simulation, active device modeling and new instrumentation for performance verification. So, they tend to conduct their designs relying on experience, empirical concepts, and many trial and error iterations in the lab. This talk will reveal the ubiquitous presence of nonlinearity in all RF and microwave circuits and the recent efforts made to understand, model, predict, and measure its diverse manifestations. We aim to bring microwave engineers’ attention to newly available techniques, and attract researchers to pursue further studies on this scientifically exciting topic. Starting with some elementary properties of nonlinear circuits (like nonlinear signal distortion, harmonic generation, frequency conversion and spectral regrowth), we will show that nonlinearity is present in all wireless circuits, either to perform a desired signal operation or as unintentional distortion. In this way, we will show how oscillators, modulators or mixers could not exist without nonlinearity, while power-amplifier designers struggle to get rid of its distortion effects. After this theoretical overview, we will introduce some recent advancements in nonlinear microwave circuit analysis tools and illustrate different types of models that are currently being used to represent and predict device, circuit, and system performance. Finally, we will focus the talk on the key metrics that are used to characterize nonlinear behavior, as well as newly developed lab instruments and their ability to assess device performance. Biography: José C. Pedro received the diploma, doctoral and habilitation degrees in electronics and telecommunications engineering, from University of Aveiro, Portugal, in 1985, 1993 and 2002, respectively. From 1985 to 1993 he was an Assistant Lecturer at University of Aveiro, and a Professor since 1993. Currently he is a Full Professor at the same University, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Telecommunications. His main scientific interests include active device modeling and the analysis and design of various nonlinear microwave circuits, in particular, the design of highly linear multi-carrier power amplifiers and mixers. He is the leading author of Intermodulation Distortion in Microwave and Wireless Circuits (Artech House, 2003), has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers in international journals and symposia, and served the IEEE in the Portuguese MTT/AP/ED Joint Chapter, the MTT-11 Technical Committee and as a reviewer and Associate Editor for the MTT Transactions and reviewer for the MTT-IMS and the EuMC. Prof. Pedro has served his university department as the Coordinator of the Scientific Council and as the Department Head. Prof. Pedro received the Marconi Young Scientist Award in 1993 and the 2000 Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Measurement Prize. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the nonlinear distortion analysis of microwave devices and circuits. Currently, he is an IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer.