AP-S Travel Grant Awardees

Dr. Martin Petek (Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2017, and the M.Sc. degree in Electro-physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2020. From 2021 to 2025, he was a Ph.D. student at Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy, where he received the Ph.D. degree cum laude. In 2023, he was a visiting Ph.D. student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Since 2025, he has been a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino. In 2025, he also completed two short research visits at UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Dr. Petek received the Best Electromagnetics Paper Award at the 2026 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation. In 2025, he received the ECAP-TICRA Travel Grant, the IEEE AP-S Fellowship, the Erasmus+ Scholarship, and the IEEE AP-S C. J. Reddy Travel Grant for Graduate Students. In 2023, he received a Short-Term Scientific Mission Grant from COST Action SyMat. His work was featured in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation in March 2025 and March 2026, and in What’s Hot in Antennas and Propagation in 2025.

Dr. Petek has contributed to four papers in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, more than 15 conference contributions, and one patent application. He has volunteered at four conferences, serving as volunteer coordinator at two of them. He is also a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. His current research interests include numerical techniques, integral equation methods, periodic structures, and higher symmetries in electromagnetics.

Praveen Singh has been awarded this grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled "Deep Bayesian optimization for constraint-aware multi-objective antenna design". He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Ravi S. Hegde and Prof. KP Ray at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.

Aradhana Singh Kaintura has been awarded the grant to further her research and to present her paper entitled “Compact Butler Matrix-Fed OAM Multiplexing for Future High Capacity Communications." She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree with her advisor, Prof. Rajib Kumar Panigrahi, at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Dongseop Lee has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled "Antenna-on-Headlight (AoH) for Integrated Sensing and Illumination (ISAI) Systems". He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree with his advisor Wonbin Hong at Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea.

Byeongjin Kim has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled “Experimental Demonstration of 2D Beam-Steerable Reconfigurable Transmissive Metasurface Using Polarization-Rotating Dual-Metal Single-LC Unit Cell for 6G Sub-THz Communication.” He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Jungsuek Oh at Seoul National University, South Korea.

Yanwen Chen has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled "Beyond Hannan’s Limit on Embedded Element Efficiency Using Tightly Coupled Array Elements". He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree with his advisor Stefano Maci at University of Siena, Italy.

Bhargav Kowlagi has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled “Near-Field Probe Analysis of Glioma Contrast and Depth Sensitivity in 603–814 GHz Band.” He is currently pursuing his Master of Applied Science degree with his advisor, Dr. Zhizhang (David) Chen, in the RF & Wireless Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada.

Khushboo Daga has been awarded the grant to further her research and to present her paper entitled “Compact Dual Band SIW Leaky-Wave Antenna for CubeSat Ku/K Band Applications”. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree at the University of Glasgow, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Qammer H. Abbasi and Prof. Masood Ur-Rehman.

Pooja Sharma has been awarded the grant to further her research and to present her paper entitled “Low SAR On Body Compact Metasurface Integrated Wearable Antenna for ISM- Band Applications". She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree with her advisor, Prof. Arvind Kumar, at the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India.

Haochang Wu has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled "Physics-Anchored Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Radio Environment Mapping in Indoor Industrial Environments". He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree with his advisor Xingqi Zhang at University College Dublin, Ireland.

Michael Kleinschmidt has been awarded the grant to further his research and to present his paper entitled "Introducing a-Priori Information to Radar Cross Section Evaluation". He is currently pursuing his PhD degree with his advisor Francesca Vipiana at Politecnico di Torino, Italy.