Source: TU Delft.

TU Delft EEMCS professor of Applied Electromagnetics Andrea Neto has been awarded a grant of € 1.5 million by the European Research Council.

To win an ERC grant, it is not enough to be the best in your field. ¡°The Valorisation Centre made me rewrite the proposal several times¡±, Andrea Neto recalls. ¡±Coming from an industrial background, I am always careful not to promise anything I cannot deliver, so my statements were not ambitious enough. As I was also advised to quantify my goals, I finally claimed my antenna technology would make time-domain sensing systems 1000 times more efficient. This bold statement got me through the first evaluation phase, and later the reviewers said: ¡®even if you accomplish less, it¡¯s money well spent¡¯. So the strategy worked!¡±

Dispersion

Andrea, who joined EEMCS a year and a half ago, is happy in his new environment. ¡°My colleagues in the Microelectronics department are almost all IEEE-fellows¡±, he says admiringly. ¡°I hope to follow in their footsteps.¡± He is an international expert on Terahertz (THz) antennas. On the electromagnetic spectrum THz is located between the upper end of the microwave range and the far infrared, a region that is almost entirely unexplored. ¡°Broadband imaging, my specialty, is essentially not done¡±, says Andrea. ¡°In my proposal I addressed one of the fundamental problems: dispersion. In order to radiate efficiently antennas have to be large. However, in large antennas the ¡®phase centre¡¯, the point from which the radiation spreads outward, moves according to frequency. I pioneered an antenna where it always remains in the same position. It¡¯s a scientific breakthrough with applications ranging from deep space investigation and environmental monitoring, to security screening and biomedical imaging.¡±

Revealing the origins of the universe

The most striking element of Andrea¡¯s CV is his experience in Spectroscopic Space Science. After his PhD research in this field, he designed the THz antennas for the European Space Agency¡¯s Herschel Planck space observatory. ¡°I expect us to also design the antennas for Planck¡¯s successor, the Japanese-European SPICA space telescope. Chances are high because of our collaboration with SRON, the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, which is the prime investigator of SPICA¡¯s spectrometer. One of the three PhDs I am hiring with the grant will be working on the design of focal plane arrays for the imaging of cosmic background radiation. It¡¯s exiting that the THz spectrum may reveal the mechanisms at the origin of the universe.¡±

Radar agenda

Another PhD student is going to work on the improvement of time-domain sensing instruments, a joint project with the THz Research group of professor Paul Plancken (Applied Physics). ¡°They use THz waves for non-destructive structural analysis¡±, Andrea explains, ¡°for example to detect hidden layers of paint in paintings. With the right antennas, we may see things that were not possible before. In principle time domain sensing can also be used for the diagnosis of skin cancer and for the evaluation of the air quality.¡± A third PhD student will be involved in a joint project on 600 to 700 GHz radar systems. ¡°The Microelectronics department is developing a road map for this technology; I am trying to build bridges between the department and other groups. The radar agenda can attract a lot of researchers, because it has many applications, such as the monitoring of the atmosphere or the detection of concealed weapons. NXP Semiconductors and the Ministry of Defence have also expressed an interest.¡± Finally, Andrea wants to hire an experienced postdoc to help him develop most of the theory.

Best of both worlds

With two more postdocs bringing their own financing, the move of Johan Lager to his group and a vacancy to fulfill, he will be leading a group of nine. ¡°I have been looking forward to this moment¡±, he says cheerfully. ¡°It has been hard work to obtain funding for my research, because it¡¯s largely fundamental and there are no tangible results yet.¡± Andrea was educated as an electromagnetics theorist in Italy, but as it was difficult to find a job, he moved towards applied research. He regrets that in North European universities many aspects of electromagnetic theory are not taught anymore. ¡°In southern countries there is less interaction between industry and universities, so universities feel less pressure to be market & technology-driven. Fortunately EEMCS has now been accredited by the prestigious European School of Antennas, so our students can take courses from universities that excel in theoretical education. This way they get the best of both worlds.¡±