Raj Mittra is a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Science of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL., where he is the Director of the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory. He is also affiliated with Penn State University, University Park, PA, as a Professor.
He is a Hi-Ci Professor in King Abdulaziz University, in Saudi Arabia and an Honorary Professor at UTS in Sydney, Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor at Xidian University, China and at Amity University, India. Prior to joining the University of Central Florida, he worked at Penn State as a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1996 through June 2015, and he continued with Penn State as a Special Professor. He also worked as a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign from 1957 through 1996, when he moved to Penn State University.
He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Past-President of AP-S, and he has served as the Editor of the Transactions of the Antennas and Propagation Society. He won the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 1965, the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, and the IEEE Millennium medal in 2000. Other honors include the IEEE/AP-S Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002, the Chen-To Tai Education Award in 2004 and the IEEE Electromagnetics Award in 2006, and the IEEE James H. Mulligan Award in 2011. Recently, he was recognized by the IEEE with an Alexander Graham Bell award, and by the URSI with a Rawer medal, both in 2020.
He has been a Visiting Professor at Oxford University, Oxford, England and at the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark. He has served as the North America editor of the Journal AEU. He has been appointed a Distinguished Professor (Adjunct) at the Yun Tze University in Taiwan, at the Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, PRC.
Dr. Mittra specializes in the design of electromagnetic systems such as radars, satellite antennas, communication systems including 5G, microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits and instruments for remote sensing and geophysical prospecting. His role in the design of these systems is primarily in the development of special-purpose computer programs and algorithms that are capable of solving problems that are well beyond the reach of commercially available computer codes. The Electromagnetic Communication laboratory, of which Dr. Mittra is the Director, is engaged in a number of different areas of research under the general umbrella of Electromagnetics and Communication.
He has published over 1000 technical papers and more than 35 books or book chapters on various topics related to Electromagnetics, Antennas, Microwaves and Electronic Packaging. He is one of the top highly-cited researchers in Electromagnetics, as evidenced by the Citation index compiled by Thomson Scientific, Google and others.
He has advised more than 130 Ph.D and about an equal number of M.S. thesis students over the years, and has mentored more than 70 postdocs. He also has five patents on Communication Antennas to his credit. He has directed, as well as lectured in, numerous short-courses on Computational Electromagnetics, Electronic packaging, Wireless Antennas, RFID, Metamaterials, etc., both nationally and internationally. He has also served on a number of government panels on antenna designs and evaluation of Computational Electromagnetics codes.
Dr. Mittra is a Principal Scientist and President of RM Associates, a consulting company founded in 1980, which provides services to industrial and governmental organizations, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Education
- University of Calcutta, India – M.S. in Radiophysics and Electronics, 1953
- University of Toronto, Canada – Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, 1957
Work Experience
- Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, Electromagnetics Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, 1957-1996
- Professor, Electrical Engineering Department; Director, Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory Pennsylvania State University, 1996 – 2014, and continuing as Adjunct Professor
- Professor, Electrical Engineering Department; Director, Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory University of Central Florida. 2014-present
Other Experience
- University of Colorado, Engineering Experiment Station, Summer, Research Associate, 1959; University of Colorado and National Bureau of Standards, Boulder, Colorado, Summer, Research Associate, 1963; Oxford University, England, Department of Engineering Science, Visiting Professor, 1965-1966; Bell Telephone Laboratories, Whippany, New Jersey, Summer, Antenna Research Department, Research Specialist, 1967; TRW Systems, Redondo Beach, California, Summer, Research Specialist, 1968; University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, Center for Advanced Study, 1968; TRW Systems, Redondo Beach, California, Summer, Research Specialist, 1969
- Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, Visiting Professor, 1971-1972; University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, Electrical Engineering Department, Associate Director of the Electromagnetics Laboratory, 1972-1983; Antennas and Propagation Society of IEEE, President, 1976-1977; Electromagnetics Society, Board of Directors, 1978
- AEÜ, Editor, 1975-2001
- Transactions Antennas and Propagation Society, Editor, 1980-1983; Schlumberger-Doll Research Center Ridgefield, Connecticut, Visiting Scientist, 1983; University of Illinois, Director of the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory, 1984-1996
- WiseAnalysis Ltd - Technical mentor, 2022-Present
- RM Associates – A Consulting and Software Development Company providing services to the Department of Defense and many major aerospace, computer and communications companies, both in the U.S. and abroad – President, 1980-Present
Selected Awards and Achievements
- Guggenheim Fellowship Award,1965
- IEEE Centennial Medal, 1984
- IEEE Millennium Medal, 2000
- AP Distinguished Achievement Award, 2002
- IEEE Electromagnetics Award, 2006
- IEEE James H. Mulligan Award, 2011
- URSI Rawer Gold Medal, 2019
- IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Recognition, 2020