ECE Graduate Student Receives International Award

Tutku Karacolak

Tutku Karacolak, a PhD student in the ECE department, received a prestigious international award from IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. The IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Graduate Fellowship Awards were given annually to five outstanding PhD students in the world who conduct research in electromagnetics. The applicants were not only judged based on their resume and scholarly publications, but also based on a research proposal they were required to submit. In order to support the winning proposals, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society provided $2,500 funds for the awardees. The project director and Tutku's advisor Assistant Prof. Erdem Topsakal congratulated Tutku and commented on his achievements.

"This is excellent news for Tutku and for our department. I am very proud of him and he clearly deserves this award. This and similar awards given to our graduate students show the strength and hard work of our graduate students and the dedication of our faculty to undergraduate and graduate education."

Tutku is developing antennas for implantable applications such as heart pacemakers, and continuous glucose monitoring. Though he is still a second year PhD student, he has already published four peer reviewed journal papers in the international journals (two more under review), and 20 conference papers. His latest journal paper entitled "Design of a Dual-Band Implantable Antenna and Development of Skin Mimicking Gels for Continuous Glucose Monitoring" will appear in the April issue of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques which is one of the highest impact factor IEEE journals.

Tutku's picture will appear in one of the upcoming issues of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine along with four other awardees.

Tutku is a member of the ECE Electromagnetic Research Group, other members are graduate students Santosh Seran, Zach Hood, Tuba Yilmaz and undergraduate student Brooke Grantham