Hua Wang has been named as the recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Young Engineer Award, given by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) as the highest honor for young MTT-S members to recognize their distinguished technical achievements within the MTT-S fields of interest, exemplary service to the MTT-S, or a combination of both.

Wang is being honored "for outstanding early career contributions to the microwave profession" and will receive this award at the 2017 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium, which will be held June 4-9 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He will be the fourth faculty member from the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) to receive this prestigious honor. Previous ECE awardees include John Papapolymerou (2009), Manos Tentzeris (2006), and Joy Laskar (2003).

Wang is the Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor in ECE and leads the Georgia Tech Electronics and Micro-System (GEMS) Lab. He is interested in innovating and engineering mixed-signal, RF, and millimeter-wave/THz integrated systems for wireless communication and bioelectronics applications, such as 5G mm-Wave MIMO communication and Augmented-Reality/Virtual-Reality (AR/VR) data transfer, mm-Wave/THz hyperspectral imaging for food safety and security scanning, THz nano-radio Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, and massively paralleled cell screening platforms for new drug development.

Since 2012, his graduate students have received 34 fellowships and awards from several different IEEE societies or best paper or designer awards from IEEE conferences, government agencies, and industry. Wang received the NSF CAREER Award, the Lockheed Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award, and the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award, and he was elevated to IEEE Senior Member in 2015. He is also the chair of the Atlanta section of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits and Circuits and Systems Societies. Wang’s group has published 89 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His research has been supported by government agencies including NSF, ARO, ARL, ONR, AFRL, NIST, and DARPA, as well as multiple industry sponsors.

"I am humbled to receive this prestigious MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, and I am deeply indebted to so many great people who have supported me," Wang said. "With the surging interest in 5G communication, IoT, and security, there are many emerging applications and new challenges in the field of microwave engineering. Our School of ECE has a long and rich history in this space, and it provides a perfect research environment for us to address these unmet technology needs."

Photo cutline: Hua Wang (right) is presented with the 2017 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award by Dylan Williams, the president of IEEE MTT-S.