Chung-Tse (Michael) Wu, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received a prestigious Director’s Fellowship Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was a recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) in 2019.
The highly competitive DARPA Director’s Fellowship Award provides an additional year of funding and support to a select group of DARPA Young Faculty Award recipients who have demonstrated exceptional technical achievement and leadership at the end of their initial two-year base award period.
“I am immensely grateful and truly humbled and honored that the research carried out by my team has been recognized by this highly prestigious award,” says Wu. “It will enable us to continue working on cutting-edge research in developing wideband antenna arrays.”
Wu’s project, “Metamaterial Integrated Ultra-Broadband Antenna Array with Embedded Reconfigurable Non-Foster Circuits,” seeks to develop an antenna relay with ultra-broad instantaneous bandwidth able to provide spectrum flexibility in communication and high resolution in radar sensing for military applications. “The project can potentially have a profound impact on next-generation radar sensors and communication systems where a large instantaneous bandwidth is demanded,” says Wu.
The DARPA YFA program exposes leading junior faculty to Department of Defense, or DOD, national security challenges by providing them with funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to help them devise research projects that address the nation’s security needs. Over time, the DARPA YFA program hopes to seed the next generation of STEM practitioners who will focus much of their careers on DoD and national security issues.
Photo caption: Chung-Tse (Michael) Wu (right) is pictured with students Yichao Yuan and Minning Zhu (left to right) inside the anechoic chamber located in Dr. Wu's Microwave Research Lab. The object is a wideband horn antenna.