Benjamin Cook has won a prestigious IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Doctoral Research Award. A Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he is advised by Emmanouil M. Tentzeris.

The title of Mr. Cook's work is "Inkjet-Printed Millimeter-Wave Antennas and Sensors for Smart Skin Applications." Printing is a century-old technology that has allowed for the mass re-production of patterns. By replacing the standard colored inks in printers with custom in-house electronic inks developed in Dr. Tentzeris' research group, wires, sensors, transistors, and antennas can be printed onto a wide variety of substrates such as paper. This technology allows for a breakthrough in manufacturing "smart skins," which are large printed wallpapers of cognitive sensors. These smart skins can sense strains or cracks on bridges, toxic gases in buildings, or the shelf-life of produce in grocery stores at a cost which isn't much higher than printing newspapers roll-to-roll.

In addition to a monetary award, Mr. Cook's achievement will be recognized in an upcoming issue of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Magazine. Before pursuing his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, he received his B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2010 and his M.A.Sc. in electrical engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia in 2011.