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National Radio Science Meeting, January 9-12, 2013
On January 9-12, 2013, the U.S. National Committee (USNC) of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) sponsored the National Radio Science Meeting at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. The USNC-URSI represents U.S. radio scientists in URSI, and every year this committee holds this meeting in cooperation with the The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Antennas and Propagation Society. This year the USNC-URSI awarded a hundred student travel fellowships, three student paper awards, and also held the first Women's Reception at this meeting. On January 10, 2013 over twenty female students and professionals in the radio science field gathered to network and share career experiences. For more information regarding this meeting, please visit the meeting website.

 

2013 – The Year of Mathematics of Planet Earth
More than 100 academic institutions and scholarly societies have joined in a major world-wide initiative: Mathematics of Planet Earth (MPE) 2013. This year-long effort will highlight the contributions made by mathematics in tackling global problems, including natural disasters, climate change, sustainability, etc. MPE2013 partners are sponsoring workshops, research conferences, public lectures, outreach events, and educational opportunities for all ages. MPE2013 enjoys the patronage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). For more information, visit http://mpe2013.org/.

Meeting Highlight: Remote Sensing and Communication Systems in Disaster Mitigation and Response

Co-Chairs:

• Amir I Zaghloul, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, USNC Commission C Chair
• V. Chandrasekar, Colorado State University, USNC Commission F Chair

Keynote Speakers:
Charles W. Bostian, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Charles W. Bostian is Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he has been a faculty member since 1969. He received emeritus status in 2010. Prior to joining the university, he served as a U.S. Army officer and worked briefly for Corning Glassworks. He holds B.S. (1963), M.S. (1964), and Ph.D. (1967) degrees from North Carolina State University. For many years he served as the Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT), a laboratory within Wireless@Virginia Tech.

Elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1992 for contributions to and leadership in the understanding of satellite path radio wave propagation, Bostian is a former chair of the IEEE-USA Engineering R&D Policy Committee and served as Associate Editor for Propagation of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He is a member of U.S. Commission F of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).

Masayuki Maki, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention and Tsukuba University, Tsukuba, JAPAN
Masayuki Maki received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 1981 and 1983, respectively, and received the D.Sc. from Hokkaido University in 1989. He joined the National Research Center for Disaster Prevention (now National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention) in 1985 as a researcher. He is now serving as the Director of Storm, Flood and Landslide Research Division of the same research institute. Other former activities include Visiting Scientist, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Oklahoma, USA (1989-1990) and the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Australia (1998-2000). His research interests include the application of polarimetric weather radar to the quantitative precipitation estimation and forecasting. Recently he is interested in volcanic ash detection using polarimetric radar.

Dr. Maki is a member of the American Meteorological Society, Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources, Japan Meteorological Society, and Japan Geoscience Union.
 

ERNEST K. SMITH USNC-URSI STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION
Prizes will be awarded to three graduate student papers. Awards will be made for First Prize in the amount of $1000, Second Prize at $750, and Third Prize at $500. Please see http://www.nrsmboulder.org/content/ernest-k-smith-usnc-ursi-student-prize-paper-competition for additional information, or contact the Student Paper Chair Prof. Danilo Erricolo, Dept. of ECE, University of Illinois at Chicago, erricolo@ece.uic.edu. Student papers and awards will be presented at the Plenary Session on Thursday morning, January 10, 2013. Student Paper Competition participants will have the option of submitting their full papers for publication in a special section of the journal Radio Science.

USNC-URSI Supports Students at 2012 National Radio Science Meeting
USNC-URSI maintains an active student travel and support program. The committee provided travel support for 104 students to the annual National Radio Science Meeting in Boulder, Colorado in early January 2012. Each of these students presented at least one paper at the conference as first author.

Another important part of the student program is the Ernest K. Smith USNC-URSI Student Prize Prize competition held at the Boulder meeting each January. Three student papers were selected as finalists in the competition and received awards of $1,000, $750, and $500 for first, second, and third places respectively.

From left to right: Steve Reising, Susan Hagness, Matthew Burfeindt, Pai-Yen Chen, Timothy Brockett, Yahya Rahmat-Samii, Danilo Erricolo

The 2012 winners are:

First place:
Matthew Burfeindt, University of Wisconsin-Madison - "SNR-enhanced Inverse Scattering for Microwave Breast Imaging" (advisors: Susan Hagness and Barry Van Veen)

Second place:
Timothy Brockett, UCLA - "A New Paradigm in Solar Energy Harvesting: Characterization of High Absorption Nanopillar Array Photovoltaics" (co-author: Harish Rajagopalan and advisor: Yahya Rahmat-Samii)

Third place:
Pai-Yen Chen, University of TX at Austin - "Ultra-Broadband Mantle Cloak Using Non-Foster Negative-Impedance Metasurfaces" (advisor: Andrea Alù)

2013 IEEE AP-S and USNC-URSI Meeting
The 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting will be held jointly July 7-12, 2013, at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA. The symposium and meeting are cosponsored by the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) and the U.S. National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science (USNC-URSI) Commissions A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and K. The joint meeting is intended to provide an international forum for the exchange of information on state-of-the-art research in antennas, propagation, electromagnetic engineering, and radio science. The deadline for abstract submission is Tuesday, January 15, 2013. Please view the Call for Papers for more information.

30th URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium
The 30th URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium was held on August 13-20, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. For more information on the scientific program, please visit the XXX URSI General Assembly website.

Photo copied from http://www.ursigass2011.org/.