Assigned mentee: Adam Newton (adam.newton@downstate.edu)

Gianluca Lazzi is a USTAR Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah. Prior to his appointment at the University of Utah, he was a Professor (2006–2009), an Associate Professor (2003–2006) and an Assistant Professor (1999–2003) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh. A Fellow of the IEEE, he has been the Chair of Commission K (Electromagnetics in Biology and Medicine) (2006–2008) and a Member-at-Large (2009–2011) of the U.S. National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI). He was the recipient of the 1996 “Curtis Carl Johnson Memorial Award” best paper at the 18th Annual Technical Meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS), a 1996 International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award, a 2001 Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Grant for Young Investigators, a 2001 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the 2003 ALCOA Foundation Engineering Research Award, the 2006 H.A. Wheeler Award from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society for the best application paper published in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION in 2005, a 2008 best paper award at the IEEE conference “GlobeCom,” the 2009 ALCOA Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award, a 2009 R&D100 Award, and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Award from the R&D Magazine for the Artificial Retina Project. He served as a Guest Editor for the Special Issue on Biological Effects and Medical Applications of RF/Microwaves of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES in 2004. In 2009, he was the Technical Program Committee Chair of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation International Symposium and URSI meeting in Charleston, SC. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE and the Chair of the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award Committee. Since January 2008, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS. For the past 15 years, he has been working as a member of interdisciplinary and multiinstitutional centers for the development of advanced implantable systems. His technology and modeling efforts have been dedicated in particular to the development of an artificial retina to restore partial vision to the blind (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKXmHnvVX4g). Our research in biomedical electromagnetics has generated considerable interest due to potential high impact on medical devices. Among the contributions which have been recognized are computational methods to calculate the electromagnetic distribution in neural tissue for optimization of neurostimulators, human body models for the safety assessment of wireless biomedical devices, implantable microantennas and coils for high-data rate wireless biomedical devices, novel coils for wireless telemetry systems, methods for the minimization of the temperature increase in the human body due to implantable devices, and methods to optimize electrode shape and size for neurostimulators. See https://ieeetv.ieee.org/player/html/viewer?dl=#life-sciences-grand-challenge-conference-gianluca-lazzi (this link should work in one week I am told!) to see my presentation at the 2012 IEEE Life Science Grand Challenges Symposium, National Academies, Oct. 2012.