Entrepreneurship for Young Professionals in Antennas and Propagation – A Panel Discussion

Prof. A. Alphones received his B.Sc (Applied Sciences) from University of Madras in 1979, B.Tech. from Madras Institute of Technology in 1982, M.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1984 and Ph.D. degree in Optically Controlled Millimeter wave Circuits from Kyoto Institute of Technology (Japan) in 1992. He was a JSPS visiting fellow from 1996-97 at Japan. During 1997-2001, he was with Centre for Wireless Communications, National University of Singapore mainly involved in the teaching and research on optically controlled passive/active devices. Since 2001 he is with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has published and presented over 300 technical papers in peer reviewed International Journals/ Conferences. His current interests are microwave photonics, wireless power transfer, visible light communication and positioning and metamaterial based leaky wave antennas including multi band filters. He has delivered tutorials and short courses in many international conferences. He has organized many IEEE flagship conferences APMC 2009, MWP 2011, TENCON 2016 and APMC 2019. He was the chairman of IEEE Singapore section and IEICE (Japan) overseas representative. Also he served as a panel member in the IEEE Conference Quality Committee.

Dr. Jaume Anguera, IEEE Fellow, founder and CTO at the technology company Ignion (Barcelona, Spain). Associate Professor at Ramon LLull University and a member of the GRITS research group. He is an inventor of more than 150 granted patents, most of them licensed to telecommunication companies. Among his most outstanding contributions is that of inventor of Antenna Booster Technology, a technology that fostered the creation of Ignion. Many of these products have been adopted by the wireless industry worldwide, to allow wireless connectivity to IoT devices through a miniature component called an antenna booster that is ten times smaller than conventional antennas. Author of more than 250 scientific widely cited papers and international conferences (h-index 50). Author of 7 books. He has participated in more than 22 competitive research projects financed by the Spanish Ministry, by CDTI, CIDEM (Generalitat de Catalunya) and the European Commission for an amount exceeding € 6M being principal researcher in most of them. He has taught more than 20 antenna courses around the world (USA, China, Korea, India, UK, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Tunisia, Spain). With over 22 years of R&D experience, he has developed part of his professional experience with Fractus in South Korea in the design of miniature antennas for large Korean companies such as Samsung and LG. Since 2017 he is with Ignion with the role of CTO where he leads the R&D activity of the company creating new products, envisaging new technologies, fostering synergies with partners, and providing technology strategy to scale the business of the company. He has received several national and international awards (ex. 2004 Best Ph. D Thesis -two prizes, one given by Telefónica Mobile, 2004 IEEE New Faces of Engineering, 2014 Finalist European Patent Award). He has directed the master/doctorate thesis to more than 130 students, many of them have received awards for their thesis (COIT, COITT, Ministry of Education). His biography appears in Who’sWho in the World and Who’sWho in Science and Engineering. He is associate editor of the IEEE Open Journal on Antennas and Propagation, Electronics Letters, International Journal of Electronics and Communications, and reviewer in several IEEE and other scientific journals. He is an IEEE Antennas and Propagation Distinguished Lecturer and vice-chair of the working group “Software and Modeling” at EurAAP. More info at http://users.salleurl.edu/~jaume.anguera/

Dr. Kush Agarwal is the Founder & CEO of WaveScan Technologies, a Singapore-based deep-tech company developing the next generation of AI-powered microwave and millimeter-wave contactless, see-through radar technology. Kush has close to a decade of experience in R&D and management of wireless technologies, as well as co-founded three Singapore-based start-ups. He holds a Ph.D. from NUS, an M.S. from NTU, and a B.Tech. from the College of Engineering Roorkee India, all in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, specializing in component and system-level wireless interfaces. Kush is also actively involved with various Singapore government initiatives in ExComs, including new standards development, internationalization of Singaporean companies to overseas markets, and building the deep-tech start-up ecosystem in the Asia and Pacific region. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kush-agarwal/

Dr. Feng Ling is the Founder and CEO of Xpeedic Technology, a leading EDA solution provider for IC-package-system designs. His twenty years’ industrial career spans from Motorola to EDA startups Neolinear (acquired by Cadence) and Physware (acquired by Mentor Graphics). In 2009, he founded Xpeedic Technology, continuing the efforts to bring novel EDA solutions to the semiconductor industry. Dr. Ling received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2000.

Dr. Pui Yi Lau (Anna) received her Bachelor, Mphil and PhD from Electronic and Engineering Department, City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Lau is a RFID and antenna expert. She was the scientist in A*STAR Singapore, technical director of Invengo Technology, and serving Laxcen Technology Inc as CTO and CEO of Laxcen (Hong Kong) and Laxcen (Singapore). Laxcen is one of the leading suppliers of RFID products and solutions to over 1500 customers from more than 50 countries around the world. Laxcen’s product lines cover a wide spectrum of IOT applications that include NFC and UHF RFID hardware, antennas, tags and solutions for libraries, apparel, aviation, retail, logistics, supply chain and so on. Dr. Anna Lau was the chairman of IEEE Council on RFID Singapore Chapter from 2017 to 2018 She was the Vice President of Member Services and Distinguished Program Chair of IEEE Council on RFID in 2020-2021. She is serving as the IEEE Journal of RFID Associate Editor currently. Dr. Lau is the member of AIM Global Board of Directors and the chairman of AIM Asia who serve the Asia pacific region including the country chapters such as AIM China, AIM Japan, AIM Korea and the countries members in Asia pacific. AIM is the industry association in Automatic and Identification Matters including barcode, 2D barcode, NFC, RFID and IOT.

Shirook Ali (B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D., P.Eng.) is currently the CEO and Founder of Ecosystem Informatics Inc. (ESI), a company making a paradigm shift in environmental monitoring. ESI’s SaaS solutions use proprietary AI-based algorithms to calibrate GHG and air quality measurements from a moving IoT platform. Dr. Ali in an innovator and a technology creator with 33 issued patents and over 150 publications to her name. Dr. Ali has also founded Fast to Future Inc. (FTF) in 2015 as an Engineering Consulting company. As a principal at FTF, she has provided consultations as a subject matter expert to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) while working with the Department of Defence. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Dr. Ali is also a proud educator and professor at Sheridan College teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She is also an Adjunct Professor at McMaster University leading research in renewable smart technology. Prior to joining Sheridan College in 2016, she held the position of Technical Manager at BlackBerry Limited leading a technical team to integrate new technologies into the BlackBerry phone. She also held the position of Principal Member, Technical Staff in the Advanced Technology team where she is the key inventor of BlackBerry’s disruptive tunable technology that contributed to the BlackBerry phone’s strong radio frequency (RF) reputation. During her ten years at BlackBerry Limited, Dr. Ali was part of the management ideation team that built the vision for BlackBerry’s future products. She holds the Professional Engineering designation (PEng) since 2007 and has a BSc, MSc, as well as a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering.