Antennas and propagation colloquium - part 1

Prof. Kin-Fai (Kenneth) Tong is a Full Professor of Antennas and Applied Electromagnetics at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (EEE) in UCL. During his PhD research, he has been credited to be one of the first who introduced the idea of embedding microstrip patch antennas into mobile phone handsets. He was an Expert Researcher in the Photonic and Millimetre-wave Devices Group of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan. 

Prof. Tong is a Fellow of IEEE, Chartered Engineer of UK Engineering Council, Fellow of Electromagnetic Academy US and Fellow of Higher Education Academy UK. His Innovate UK project was graded as “OUTSTANDING”, i.e., the top 5%, amongst all the funded projects. Recently, his AgriTech Internet-of-Thing (IoT) Hub project supported by EPSRC IAA has resulted in two start-up companies and winning the UCL Provost’s Spirit of Enterprise Award. 

Prof Tong was the general chairman of the IEEE iWEM 2017 held in UK, the Lead Guest Editor of the IEEE OJAP Special Section, the Subject Editor of IET Electronics Letters, Associate Editor of IEEE AWPL.

Prof Tian Hong Loh is a Principal Scientist at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Also, he currently is the President of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) UK Board, Chair of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) Measurement Working Group, visiting professor at Surrey University, UK and Special Issue Editor of IET Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation (MAP).

He served as the Technical Programme Committee (TPC) chair of 18th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2024) and 2017 IEEE International Workshop on Electromagnetics (iWEM 2017), TPC member of many prestige international conferences, and as technical reviewer for several international journals and new book proposals on these subjects.

Richard Rudd is a Director at Plum with a particular interest in the modelling, measurement and underlying physics of radiowave propagation. 

Richard has managed many studies that have led to the development of new propagation models, generally based on measurements made in-house. He has developed a range of experimental equipment ranging from wideband channel sounders and bi-static radar systems to long-term data loggers and software defined radio systems. Richard has been an active participant in ITU-R Study Group 3 for many years, is one of the authors of the IET textbook “Propagation of radiowaves” and has published many peer-reviewed papers.

Richard’s other work is often concerned with broadcast systems, following an early career with the BBC’s Transmitter and Research departments, and with the conduct of sharing and interference studies for systems as diverse as radio telescopes, short-range telemetry systems and Earth-observation satellites. 

He has been a frequent participant in the regulatory work of the ITU-R and the CEPT, presenting technical studies undertaken for our clients and working to build consensus on contentious spectrum sharing issues. A further strand of work has been concerned with the practical planning of operational systems such as fixed links or broadcast networks.

Richard has a PhD from the University of Surrey and is a chartered engineer.

Akram Alomainy is the Deputy Dean for Postgraduate Research in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Head of the Antennas and Electromagnetics Research Group, Lead of the Centre for Electronics and a Professor of Antennas & Applied EM in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), UK. 

He has authored and co-authored 5 books, 6 book chapters and more than 500 technical papers (12500+ citations) in leading journals and peer-reviewed conferences. Prof Alomainy won the Isambard Brunel Kingdom Award, in 2011, for outstanding young science and engineering communicator and both the education and research excellence awards at QMUL in 2019 and 2021, respectively. 

He chairs EU and international funding panels including FWO in Belgium and serves as associate editor for various journals including IEEE AWPL, J-ERM and Nature Scientific Reports. He was the UK URSI Panel B representative until 2020 and serves as external examiner for many UK and international universities.