IEEE IMAS 2026 Keynote Speakers

Prof. Amin Abbosh is a Fellow of the IEEE and Professor at The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, where he leads the Electromagnetic Innovations (ƐMAGIN) research group.

Throughout his career, he has served as Head of the UQ School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Director of Research, Director of Research Training, Director of the Medical Electromagnetic Imaging Cooperative Research Centre, and a member of the UQ Academic Board.

He is also a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts and the chief inventor on more than 20 patents licensed to the medical industry, forming the core intellectual property of two Australian MedTech companies.

Prof. Abbosh has authored more than 600 refereed journal and conference publications covering electromagnetic theory, applied research, and industrial innovation.

His honors include receiving the IEEE APS King Prize twice, multiple University of Queensland Excellence Awards in Leadership, Research, Entrepreneurship, and PhD Supervision, as well as several Best Paper Awards at leading international conferences.

Medical microwave imaging has emerged as a promising, safe, low-cost, and portable alternative or complement to conventional medical imaging techniques. Advances in antenna technology, microwave sensing, computational electromagnetics, inverse scattering, and imaging algorithms have significantly improved its clinical potential.

This keynote reviews the evolution of medical microwave imaging from its electromagnetic foundations, highlighting the major scientific advances, remaining challenges, and the importance of physics-based modeling for reliable imaging, detection, and diagnostic performance.

The presentation introduces the emerging concept of physics-integrated artificial intelligence, where data-driven AI techniques are combined with electromagnetic models to improve image reconstruction, enhance robustness, reduce computational complexity, and enable real-time clinical decision support.

Drawing on recent research achievements, the talk demonstrates how integrating electromagnetic physics with AI is transforming medical microwave imaging and accelerating its translation from laboratory research into practical healthcare applications.

The keynote concludes with an outlook on future research opportunities and the next generation of intelligent microwave imaging systems that combine physics and artificial intelligence to deliver more accurate, reliable, and accessible healthcare solutions.

Stefano Maci is a Professor at the University of Siena (UNISI), with scientific responsibility for a research group of 15 researchers. He is also the Director of the UNISI PhD School of Information Engineering and Science, which presently includes about 60 PhD students.

His research interests include high-frequency and beam representation methods, computational electromagnetics, large phased arrays, planar antennas, reflector antennas and feeds, metamaterials, and metasurfaces.

Since 2000, Prof. Maci has been responsible for several projects funded by the European Union, including serving as WP Leader of the Antenna Center of Excellence (ACE, FP6-EU) from 2004 to 2007 and as International Coordinator of a 24-institution Marie Curie Action consortium from 2007 to 2010.

He has also carried out research projects supported by the European Space Agency (ESA-ESTEC), the European Defence Agency (EDA), the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and numerous international industries and research institutions.

Prof. Maci has served on the Technical Advisory Boards of international conferences, Review Boards of international journals, and has organized numerous special sessions and short courses for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society.

He has served as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility and IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, as well as Guest Editor of special issues. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of IEEE.

In 2004, he founded the European School of Antennas (ESoA), a leading PhD school covering antennas, propagation, electromagnetic theory, and computational electromagnetics. The school brings together leading European research centers and experts in the field.

Prof. Maci has also been involved in NATO research activities and is currently involved in research related to metamaterials for defense and security applications.

He was co-founder of two spin-off companies and has served as honorary President of LEAntenne e Progetti SPA since 2008.

His research activity includes 10 book chapters, more than 100 papers in international journals, and approximately 300 papers in international conference proceedings. His research has received more than 2000 citations according to Google Scholar.

Metasurfaces constitute a class of thin metamaterials that can be used from microwave to optical frequencies to create new electromagnetic engineering devices. They are obtained by a dense periodic texture of small elements printed on a grounded slab, with or without shorting vias.

Metasurfaces have been used for realizing electromagnetic bandgaps (EBG) and equivalent magnetic walls. By changing the dimensions of the elements while maintaining the same sub-wavelength two-dimensional periodicity, the structure produces a pixelated visual effect together with an electromagnetic modulation of the equivalent local reactance.

The resulting Modulated Metasurface Reactance (MMR) is able to transform surface or guided waves into different wavefield configurations with required properties. This MMR-driven wavefield transformation is referred to as “Metasurfing.”

The MMR allows a local modification of the dispersion equation and, at a constant operating frequency, a modification of the local wavevector. The resulting effects are similar to those obtained in volumetric inhomogeneous metamaterials as predicted by Transformation Optics, particularly in redirecting the propagation path of an incident wave, while providing significant technological simplicity.

When the MMR is covered by a top ground plane, forming a parallel-plate waveguide Metasurfing structure, the real part of the Poynting vector follows a generalized Fermat principle similar to ray-field propagation in an inhomogeneous solid medium. This concept can be used for designing lenses and point-source-driven beam-forming networks.

When the MMR is uncovered, wave propagation is accompanied by leakage. A surface wave is transformed into a leaky wave, and the structure itself becomes an extremely flat antenna.

Introducing slots into the printed elements enables polarization control. In these configurations, the metasurface can be described using an anisotropic surface impedance.

In this lecture, after introducing the design methodology of metasurfing-wave antennas, several examples are presented and discussed, including Luneburg lenses, Maxwell’s Fish-eyes, isoflux antennas, Doppler-guide antennas, and new transmission lines.

Hua Wang is a Full Professor at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET) at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He is the Institute Head of the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS).

Prior to joining ETH Zürich, he was a Tenured Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. He also worked at Intel and Skyworks from 2010 to 2011.

He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, in 2007 and 2009, respectively.

Prof. Wang’s research interests focus on innovating analog, mixed-signal, RF, and mm-Wave integrated circuits and systems for wireless communication, sensing, and bioelectronics. He has authored or co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers with an H-index of 58.

Dr. Wang is an IEEE Fellow and a Top Contributing Author to the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) over the past 70 years, covering the period 1954–2023.

His honors include the IEEE Microwave Prize in 2025, the Top-10 Key Achievement Award among all Horizon Europe SNS-JU programs in 2025, the DARPA Director’s Fellowship Award in 2020, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2018, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2015, the Qualcomm Faculty Award in 2020 and 2021, and the IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award in 2017.

Radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) are foundational to modern wireless and wireline communication and sensing applications, including high-speed wireless 5G and 6G networks, satellite links, wireline interconnects for data centers, and various radar and imaging systems.

Recently, inspired by progress in the photonics, antenna, microwave modeling, and electronic design automation (EDA) communities, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have gained increasing traction as data-driven tools for augmenting RF circuit design.

In this keynote talk, I will present a review of the recent progress and challenges of AI-assisted RFIC design, including EM surrogate models, neural operators, data-generation costs, computational resources, model fidelity, sample informativeness, and model reuse.

Multiple AI-assisted inverse design methods and their silicon demonstrations will be reviewed, including direct end-to-end (E2E) synthesis, optimization-based inverse design with fast surrogates, and emerging generative-model-assisted approaches.

Several recent examples from ETH Zürich will be presented with full technical details.

Finally, the talk will discuss open challenges and future directions toward reliable data-driven specifications-to-layout automation for full-loop active-passive RFIC designs.

Adel Alzogaiby holds a B.Eng. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from King Saud University (KSU), Saudi Arabia, obtained in 2004, and an M.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, obtained in 2014.

He began his career in 2005 as a Radar Engineer at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia, where he contributed to various defense research and development projects in collaboration with international organizations. His expertise spans radar systems engineering, waveform design and analysis, and radar signal and data processing.

In 2015, Adel joined PSDSARC, Saudi Arabia, initially as the Department Head of Defense Modelling and Simulation, later advancing to Director of the Radar and Communications Systems Lab. In this role, he led the technical management of various research and development projects, including passive radar and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS).

From 2022 to 2024, he served as Chief Engineer of Air Defense Systems at the Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI). His work focused on the development of advanced air defense capabilities and strategic collaboration between industry, universities, and research centers in the field of Defense Electronics.

Today, he serves as the General Supervisor of the Technical Development Sector at PSDSARC, where he leads the development of local capabilities in Radar, Electronic Warfare (EW), and Unmanned Systems.

The rapid evolution of drone warfare is reshaping modern conflict, as low-cost, commercially available unmanned systems increasingly challenge traditional approaches to surveillance, air defense, electronic warfare, communications, and precision engagement.

As drones advance toward greater autonomy, coordination, and mass deployment, the competition between offensive and counter-UAS capabilities is intensifying. Key technical challenges include detecting and classifying small, low-RCS and RF-silent drones in complex environments, ensuring resilient communications under electronic attack, operating without GNSS, coordinating large-scale drone swarms, and countering saturation attacks in a cost-effective and scalable manner.

Many of these problems lie within the microwave, RF, and antenna domains, driving new research opportunities in distributed and passive radar, electronic warfare, adaptive antennas and digital beamforming, resilient and low-probability-of-intercept communications, RF-based navigation, sensor fusion, high-power microwave systems, and spectrum management.

This keynote highlights how the evolving drone battlefield is creating a new generation of technology that will significantly influence future sensing, communications, electronic warfare, and air-defense architectures, while opening a major research frontier for the IMAS community.