Aline Eid has been selected for a 2020 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) graduate fellowship award and received the first-place award in the student poster competition at the FLEX MEMS & Sensors Technical Congress, held February 24-27 in San Jose, California.

Eid received the FLEX Conference Best Poster Award and the IEEE MTT-S graduate fellowship for her research in flexible printed wireless electronics. She is a third year Ph.D. student and is a member of the ATHENA Lab, where she is advised by Manos Tentzeris, who holds the Ken Byers Professorship in Flexible Electronics. The title of her award-winning poster was “5G Ambient mm-wave Power is Coming: Get Your Stickers Ready!” and was co-authored with Tentzeris and Jimmy Hester, a recent Ph.D. graduate of Tentzeris’ group who is a founder at Atheraxon in Atlanta.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will result in the installation of 50 billion wirelessly connected autonomous electronic devices by 2021. This will require tens of millions of batteries that will need to be continuously charged and replaced. The realization of battery-less devices that can power themselves by harvesting energy around them would be highly desirable. Indeed, such capabilities would tremendously reduce the environmental impact of IoT-generated waste. The new generation of cellular 5G networks will provide an unequaled source of ambient energy: a veritable wireless power grid. Eid has solved a fundamental problem that was preventing 5G energy harvesting from being practically implemented. This was done by simultaneously combining a wide angular coverage and high gain using a unique Rotman lens structure to enable 5G long-range energy harvesting.

Eid has received several other recognitions for her work. She was awarded an honorable mention at the best paper competition at the 2019 IEEE International Microwave Symposium (IMS), in addition to receiving the second place and audience choice awards at the IMS 2019 3 Minute Thesis competition (see 3MT video link here). Using similar techniques, Eid has also developed systems that enable the long-range communication of data using a thousand times less power than existing IoT hardware.

Eid has been enrolled in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. program since 2017. She received her B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon in 2015, and her master's degree in Electromagnetics, Antennas, and RF Systems from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, in 2017.