Updated March 12, 2010

Click here to learn about the IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship worth $6000/year.

We've started splitting this page onto separate pages for each college. This will take some time, and we'll probably work hardest on the pages that have the most class participation (hint hint).

Here's a complete index to our information microwave colleges; be sure to check this list and not just scroll down below, as many of these colleges now have their own Microwaves101 page.

Arizona State University
Auburn University
Cal Tech
Clemson University
Colorado State University
Georgia Tech
Harvard University
Illinois Institute of Technology
Indian Institutes of Technology
Iowa State
Johns Hopkins University
Kansas State University
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Montana State University
National Institute of Technology, Trichy
North Carolina State University
Ohio State
Purdue University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
San Diego State University
Seoul National University
Texas A&M
University of Arizona
University of California Davis
University of California Los Angeles
University of California San Diego
University of California Santa Barbara
University of Colorado
University of Hawaii
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
University of Kansas
University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Ottawa
University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
University of South Florida
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech

There are several ways to use this page.

• Are you looking for a college or university where you can study microwave engineering?
• Or perhaps looking for an institution to do some microwave research for you on the cheap?
• Or a perhaps you want to recruit some new talent for your growing company?
• Or you are associated with a college and you want to recruit some students... one way you can help yourself is to provide us with some content on your school's capabilities, and keep us up to date.
• Maybe you're interested in obtaining the answers for that microwave quiz your professor is having tomorrow. Don't bother to study, it's multiple choice, and the answers are 1:A, 2:D, 3:C, 4:A, 5:D, 6:B, 7:B, 8:D. We're here to help!

Below we present a list of microwave colleges that can help you with all of these problems! Click here for Microwaves101 contact info and let us know if your favorite microwave house of higher learning is missing from this list, and if we add them you will win a free Microwaves101 pocketknife! "Harvard on the Highway" ain't gonna make the cut, pal, so don't waste your time!

Some of the college links below offer contact information for professors involved in the field. It is true that many of these guys walk around with one khaki pant-leg accidentally tucked into a white sock, exposing a Birkenstock slip-on, but cut them some slack (or cut them some slacks?), they have some glorious things on their minds, which are about twice the size of ours!

Arizona State University

This came in from an anonymous Sun Devil fan...

I was reading yr list of microwave schools, and it boggled my mind that you would leave off Arizona State. It is one of the highest ranked EM schools in the country due largely to the infamous Dr. Balanis, but also has world renowned radar guru and author George Pan. Throw in UMass alums Jim Aberle and Elbadawy ElSharawy and you have a veritable team of microwave Super Friends. I won't even mention the 3 or 4 other average microwave instructors that round out the group.

Here's a link to Dr. Constantine Balanis' home page. Here's a ink to the Electromagnetics, Antennas and Microwave Circuits curriculum.

Auburn University

Located in eastern Alabama, Auburn University's Electrical and Computer Engineering department offers research in microwave topics including microwave integrated circuits, microwave materials characterization, high frequency packaging and interconnects, acoustic wave sensors. We've heard they even have a small semiconductor fab line!

Professor Wentworth Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University Auburn, AL 36849. Office: 403 Broun Hall Email: stuartw@eng.auburn.edu Phone: (334) 844-1878 Fax: (334) 844-1809 http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/wentwsm/

Cal Tech

You might have heard of this little school in Pasadena California. Turns out they conduct fairly extensive microwave research activities. Click here to check out their web site. Dr. Sandy Weinreb is one of our favorite MMW MMIC authors, and he is one of their professors. Dr. Ali Hajimiri is at CalTech researching silicon for millimeter-wave systems.

Harvard University

Maybe you've heard of this little school in Cambridge Massachusetts. But did you know you can study microwave engineering there? Professor Donhee Ham's web site:

http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~donhee/

Illinois Institute of Technology

Professor Thomas T. Y. Wong teaches the Microwaves Circuits and Systems class. Professor Wong's research interests include millimeter-wave communication systems, transient phenomena, propagation effects on high-speed devices and microwave integrated circuits, microwave measurements and charge transport in solids. He is the author of the book Fundamentals of Distributed Amplification published by Artech, and has several patents in the areas of microwave electronics and wireless system design. Here's his contact info:

Thomas T. Y. Wong, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Office: Siegel Hall 316
Phone: 312.567.5796
Fax: 312.567.8976
Email: twong@ece.iit.edu

Iowa State

This link was brought to our attention by Andrew (thanks Pal!) Their Microelectronics Research Center dabbles in all kinds of things, but one of their professors, Dr. Weber is has had a lot of industry experience in microwaves. His EE 514 course teaches principles, analyses, and instrumentation used in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, wave theory in relation to circuit parameters, S-parameters, couplers, discontinuities, and microwave device equivalent circuits, RF amplifier design, microwave sources, optimum noise figure and maximum power designs, microwave filters and oscillators. Doesn't look like he missed many microwave topics, maybe he could retire someday and take over here so the Unknown Editor can be promoted to Towel Salesman at Nassau Beach...

He also wrote a text book:
Introduction to Microwave Circuits: Radio Frequency and Design Applications
Wiley-IEEE Press; 1 edition (January 9, 2001)
ISBN: 0780347048

We'll try to buy a copy and evaluate his efforts on our microwave textbook page. Here's some contact info:

Johns Hopkins University

What's this, a graduate-level course on MMIC design? Click on this link to see some great student reports on their MMIC design projects. Taught by professors Moore and Penn. JHU is in Baltimore.

Kansas State University

We've all been within six miles of Kansas, every time we fly over it at 30,000 feet, and we've heard they've "got crazy little women there..." oops, that's Kansas City Missouri... but Kansas is definitely where Dorothy and Elvira are from! Did you know that Kansas State is a great place to learn the trade! This just in from Matthew of Skyworks... Dr. Kuhn is the type of professor who is there because he loves to teach. He believes that to learn, students need to get in the lab and actually build something as well as understanding the theory. What a novel concept, huh? His students get to design cool projects like satellite downconverters and RFICs. His students have landed jobs at companies like Texas Instruments (we won't hold that against them), Motorola, Skyworks, Peregrine, Honeywell, Maxim, Garmin to name a few. Oh, and K-State, JPL and Peregrine are teaming up to putting one of his transceiver RFICs on a Mars scout mission. Pretty good for being stuck in the middle of the Kansas prairie. Here's Professor Kuhn's website. Here's link worth checking out on the Communication Research Laboratory, and another one on VLSI research!

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Univeristy of Missouri-Rolla recently changed their name to better reflect their S&T mission. Thanks to Chad for pointing this out! "MUST" has organized an Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab (EMC) consortium which you can check out here. Say, they've got some great microwave calculators on their site, maybe we should hire them...

Montana State University

This just in from Kyle, a research assistant at MSU:

"MSU - Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics Lab, I strongly suggest potential students of the black arts microwave engineering to take a look at the program offered here in the Rocky Mountains. Current work of the lab includes investigations into waveguide-based power combiners with a future focus of micromachined devices suitable for submillimeter-wave applications and investigations into the development of radio-frequency integrated circuits utilizing commercial CMOS process technologies. Dr. James P. Becker is the lab's director and is currently in the process of preparing the NSF project - CCLI "Weaving a Microwaves Thread Through the Curriculum" to further strengthen the microwave presence in MSU's Electrical Engineering department. "

Here's a photo of an MSU probe station and PNA

That sounds really cool! Here's a link to Becker's lab: click here. Here's a photo of professor Becker and his contact info:

Professor James Becker 535 Cobleigh Hall jbecker@ece.montana.edu Tel: (406) 994-5988

North Carolina State University

NCSU's College of Engineering ECE department offers Analog, RF and Mixed Mode course of study. Here is their web site. Thanks to Bill! Now all we need is for Bill to volunteer someone as a contact... Located in Raleigh, something like 6 million people live within 90 miles, or maybe the statistic is 90 people live within 6 million miles.

Ohio State

The ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL) at Ohio State does some cool microwave research. Topics include antennas, metamaterials, antenna arrays, RFICs, ultrawideband radar, the list goes on and on. Who's have thought that the Buckeye State had such a great microwave school? John Volakis is director of the ElectroScience Lab. Thanks for the info, Bob!

Professor John L Volakis (614) 292-5846 The ElectroScience Laboratory The Ohio State University 1320 Kinnear Rd. Columbus, OH 43212

Purdue University

We added Purdue at the request of Sean, soon to be an alumnus... thanks, we can't believe we forgot about this fine university located in Indiana 125 miles from the Chicago (home of the Blues Brothers) for so long!!

Sean says there's some pretty cool microwave research going on, even though the microwave staff is fairly young. They also somewhat recently (~2001) built the largest academic cleanroom (nano.purdue.edu). If you are in a position to drool without career damage, check out the list of equipment that Purdue's nanofab has!

Professor Chappell's research group focuses on applied electromagnetics. This has taken his group's research in three distinct, yet related directions; advanced packaging, integrated sensors, and wireless sensor networks. If you check out their web site you'll realize they pretty much have all of the future microwave bases covered, including advanced packaging, anisotropic conductive adhesives, metamaterials, vertical packaging for mixed signals, laser assisted circuit manufacturing, integrated sensors, integrated and miniaturized mass spectrometers, sensor networks and antennas, adaptable motes for intelligent sensor networks, environmental monitoring, electro-textiles, high power RF, and passive intermodulation. What else is there?

Professor Chappell's group's specific stuff with some research links is here:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/IDEAS

Shown below is Professor Chappell's group winning the Eta Kappa Nu Turkey contest in Fall 2005, raising money to feed distressed families a November turkey dinner with all the trimmings. A Solid Gold photo of a Solid Gold team! Why can't more microwave CEOs set a similar example? Probably because they are all Republicans!

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

RPI has some great stuff going on!

Microelectronics & Photonics Technology Group

Electric Power, Power Electronics, Plasma Engineering and Electromagnetics

More to come!

San Diego State University

Dr. Madhu Gupta heads the microwave department at SDSU.

Texas A&M

This recommendation comes from alumni Chris... Texas A&M has two excellent microwave labs there, quite independent from each other and both run by IEEE fellows.

Texas A&M is also home to the "NASA Center for Space Power". If you're interested in the beautiful yet feasible dream of beaming power from a GEO solar satellite to the earth using microwaves, this is the school to go to. Microwave Pioneer Bill Brown of Raytheon originally proposed this idea. He collaborated with Dr. Chang in his later years and transferred his entire archives and extensive equipment to the NASA center there.

University of Arizona

Located in the heart of Tucson Arizona, U of A offers some solid courses in microwave engineering. Dr. Hao Xin runs the department and his interests are:

Hao's web site is here. Here's his contact info:

Dr. Hao Xin
hxin@ece.arizona.edu
(520) 626-6941
ECE 525, University of Arizona
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

University of California Davis

Click here to visit the UC Davis web site, this link was provided by knife-winner Morgan! UC Davis is located near Sacramento, CA, the state capital and home of the Governator! We borrowed this paragraph from their web site:

"The Microwave Microsystems Laboratory is headed by Professor Anh-Vu Pham. Our group is conducting research in RF IC and transceiver design, RF MEMS, microwave wide band gap power transistor modeling, and integration and packaging techniques for RF/microwave applications. We are developing and integrating RF components for wireless, optical, and sensing communications systems. We have recently extended our research interests to nano-electronic circuits and MEMS for chemical/biological sensors and biological/non-biological actuator systems."

University of California Los Angeles

UCLA's web site is here. Their microwave department is called Antenna Research, Analysis and Measurement (ARAM) Laboratory. Dr. Yahra Ramat-Samii is one of their microwave researchers. Together with UCSB, UCLA has formed the California NanoSystems Institute, where everyone sweats the small stuff.

University of California Santa Barbara

Perhaps nowhere in the nation will you find better looking coeds, but get your mind off this, microwave engineering is serious business. Together with UCLA, UCSB has formed the California NanoSystems Institute, where everyone sweats the small stuff. Professor Robert York runs the Microwave Electronics Lab. He has posted a whole pile of supplementary information on microwave engineering, along with the homework assignments, check it out! has been working on ferro-electric devices, some of his work is reported on our page on Ferro-electric phase shifters. His other interests are high-power GaAs and GaN devices, cool stuff all!

Professor Bob York
ECE Department, ESB
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Tel: 805-893-7113
e-mail: rayork@ece.ucsb.edu
Admin Assistant: 805-893-5913

University of Colorado

Here is their web site. Dr. Zoya Popovic is one of University of Colorado's microwave gurus, in the areas of intelligent microwave circuits, and antenna arrays. Zoya has rock star status as a microwave researcher, her name appears on a million IEEE papers, maybe half that many DARPA contracts. It doesn't get any better than U of C for microwave research, if you are a student or a Fortune 50 company!

Dr. Zoya Popovic Office: Engineering Center, ECOT 252 Phone: (303) 492-0374 Fax: (303) 492-2758 E-mail: zoya@colorado.edu

Here's a link to U of C's microwave active antenna and circuits group web site.

University of Hawaii

Yes, this school has a microwave program! Click here to check out their web site. We copied this from there:

"(U of H) focuses on high-frequency integrated circuits and antennas, an area which is becoming increasingly important as computer speeds and communication frequencies increase. Current research emphasis is on advanced architectures for next-generation wireless front ends. Through research and coursework, students will learn valuable computer-aided design skills that are tightly coupled with experiment."

Here is contact info:

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

This campus has a great process facility for material research for compound semiconductors. Here is their web site.

Here's a link to the material science and engineering department.

Here's a link to the John Rogers center. They specialize in integrating organic materials with electonics.

University of Kansas

This information was provided by Kiran, a proud student of KU, where the mascot is the fearsome Jayhawk!

From the KU website... The term "Jayhawk" was probably coined about 1848. Accounts of its use appeared from Illinois to Texas. The name combines two birds--the blue jay, a noisy, quarrelsome thing known to rob other nests, and the sparrow hawk, a stealthy hunter. The message here: Don't turn your back on this bird.

So why would you want to attend KU to study microwaves? Here's some KU professors working and well known in the microwave field:

Dr. Chris Allen Research areas: * Microwave remote sensing * Radar system design and analysis
Dr. Ken Demarest Research areas: * Computational Electromagnetic Techniques * Lightwave Systems
Dr. Prasad Gogineni Research areas: * Radar systems * Microwave engineering

Dr. Fernando Rodriguez-Morales
Research Area:
* Modeling of active and passive RF and microwave components & circuits
* RF IC design
* System-in-package and system-on-chip approaches for advanced radar sensor integration

CRESIS is a NSF funded center at University of Kansas that designs radars, performs signal processing with the goal of remote sensing of ice sheets. Unlike self-discredited drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh, these people actually study the science of global warming.

University of Massachusetts Amherst

UMass has been educating the microwave masses for many years, including you-know-who. So how come they've never profiled the Unknown Editor in their Alumni Journal? You can learn about cow-tipping, shade grown tobacco, and perhaps some medicinal herbs at this ex-aggie college, where the brother of one of the FBI's most wanted list used to serve as president! They are smart enough to have already linked to us on their microwave web site: Click here! Check our our new page on the CASA Center, which is led by UMass!

Here's a microwave contact at UMass:

Professor Keith R. Carver
Marcus Hall Room 201F
phone (413) 545-1665
kcarver@ecs.umass.edu

By the way, Dr. David Pozar literally wrote the book on Microwave Engineering while he taught at UMass. Go to our book page and buy a copy!

University of Michigan

Attention minorities: now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the principle of diversity in University of Michigan admissions cases, this could be your year to apply!

UMich's RADLAB is world renowned for microwave research.

Here's one of Michigan's most famous alumni!

University of Minnesota

The Twin Cities has a Microwave Packaging and Circuits Technology group, MPACT. Check out their web site here.

Headed by Doctor Rhonda Drayton, MPACT's research involves experimental development and characterization of high speed interconnects, packaging, advanced microwave materials, and high speed material's characterization. They are tied in with the University's Nanofab center, where you can make some really tiny stuff!

University of Ottawa

Hey, no one said you have to be a college in the United States to make this elite list. Univeristy of Ottawa's RF and Microwave (RF&M) Group offers it all. We copied this from their web site:

• Antenna design / optimization (e.g. holographic antennas; reflectarray antennas).
• Electromagnetic modeling and realization of passive microwave circuit elements.
• Methods of computational electro-magnetics.
• Use of neural networks for microwave applications.
• CAD tools for linear/nonlinear microwave device/circuit modeling and design.
• Electromagnetic modeling of microwave passive devices for MCMs.
• Wireless & mobile communications (physical layer)
• Multi-antenna (MIMO) systems (capacity analysis, propagation channel, performance)
• Smart antennas
• Propagation channel modeling
• Efficient simulation algorithms for RF integrated circuits.
• Model-order reduction for distortion analysis in RF circuits.
• Model-order Reduction for linear and nonlinear circuits.
• Simulation of high-speed interconnects.
• Sensitivity computation for linear and nonlinear circuits.

University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez

Here's a college where you don't have to dress warmly, but it might help if you were bi-lingual. Dr. Sandra Cruz-Pol is involved in the CASA Center, which one day will improve our ability to predict ugly weather in your neighborhood. Check out our new page on CASA, courtesy of Dr. Cruz-Pol! These little radars will be so cheap that they'll be mounted across the country, like cell phone sites. Click on the thumbnails below for bigger images!

Mi CASA es su CASA!

Dr. Sandra Cruz-Pol Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering P.O. Box 9042 UPRM Mayaguez, PR 00681-9042 http://ece.uprm.edu/~pol

University of South Florida

How does anyone get anything done at a school that is on Spring Break year 'round? We don't know, but the folks at USF's Wireless and Microwaves Information Systems (WAMI) sure do! Here is your contact:

Larry Dunleavy
dunleavy@eng.usf.edu
phone (813) 974-2574

Check out the WAMI web site. Tell 'em to add a Microwaves101.com link when you talk to them! Larry is also involved with Modelithics.

Virginia Tech

While Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is probably known more for electro-optics than microwaves, this fine campus in Blacksburg Virginia also delves into microwave topics. Here is their web site. Learn about Hokies and Skipper here.

Here's more info on VT from alumnus Joel who wants everyone to know more about the some of the some of the brilliant minds he studied under at VT. Dr. Charles Bostian holds records in long distance microwave broadcasting, and heads the Center for Wireless Technology within the ECE department. Dr. William Davis is professor in radio technology, and is also in charge of the antenna research group at VT. Dr. Sedki Riad and Dr. Ahmad Safaai-Jazi work with time domain reflectometry. Faculty members are affiliated with the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group, working with Analog Devices, General Dynamics, Qualcomm, and Raytheon in developing new standards of industry for wireless technology. Check out their website at www.mprg.org.

Dr. Charles Bostian Office: 464 Whittemore Mailing Address: 302 Whittemore (0111) Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA 24061 Tel: (540) 231-5096 Fax: (540) 231-3004

Thanks Joel!