Sarkar named IEEE Distinguished Lecturer

Tapan K. Sarkar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science in Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS), has been named a distinguished lecturer of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Antennas and Propagation Society (APS).

Distinguished lecturers are chosen based on their broad range of expertise in the area of antennas and propagation. In this role, Sarkar will give talks of interest and importance to the AP community of IEEE APS chapters around the world. His appointment is for a period of three years, 2011-13.

Sarkar will focus on one of three topics in his lectures: “Who is the Father of Electrical Engineering?” “Physics of Multiantenna Systems and their Impacts on Wireless Systems” and “Solving Challenging Electromagnetic Problems Using a Parallel Out-of-Core Solver.”

Sarkar has been a faculty member in LCS’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 1985. His current research interests deal with numerical solutions of operator equations arising in electromagnetics and signal processing with application to system design.

His other research has included analysis and design of electromagnetic radiation from various devices, such as computers; radio and television towers; satellite and cable broadcasting systems; design of mobile adaptive communication systems, including antennas analysis; and intelligent signal processing. He is one of the five SU professors listed as an International Scientific Institute (ISI) Highly Cited Researcher.

From 1975-1976, he was with the TACO Division of the General Instruments Corp. He was with the Rochester Institute of Technology from 1976-1985. He was a research fellow at the Gordon McKay Laboratory, at Harvard University from 1977-1978.

He obtained one of the “best solution” awards in May 1977 at the Rome Air Development Center Spectral Estimation Workshop. He received the Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility in 1979 and in the 1997 National Radar Conference. He has authored or coauthored more than 300 journal articles and numerous conference papers and 32 chapters in books and 15 books.

Sarkar is a registered professional engineer in the state of New York. He received the College of Engineering Research Award in 1996 and the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Research in 1998 at SU. He was an associate editor for feature articles of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Newsletter (1986-1988), associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility (1986-1989), chairman of the Inter-commission Working Group of International URSI on Time Domain Metrology (1990–1996), distinguished lecturer for the Antennas and Propagation Society (2000-2003), member of Antennas and Propagation Society ADCOM (2004-2007), on the board of directors of ACES (2000-2006), vice president of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), a member of the IEEE Electromagnetics Award board (2004-2007), and an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (2004-2010). He is currently on the editorial board of Digital Signal Processing–A Review Journal, Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications and Microwave and Optical Technology Letters. He is the chair of the International Conference Technical Committee of IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society No. 1 on Field Theory and Guided Waves. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Sarkar received a B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur (1969), a M.Sc.E. degree from the University of New Brunswick, Canada (1971), and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from SU(1975).

He received honorary degrees from Universite Blaise Pascal in France in 1998, and from Politechnic University of Madrid in Spain in 2004. He received the Medal of the Friend of the City of Clermont Ferrand, France, in 2000.