Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Branislav Notaros has a knack for making inherently difficult topics relatable.
It is part the reason he is recognized as one of the best engineering educators in the world – and a leading researcher in the field of electromagnetics.
Now, the Colorado State University Distinguished Teaching Scholar has received the prestigious Edward E. Altshuler Prize Paper Award for authoring the top journal paper published in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine in all of 2021.
“Researchers in my community are submitting their best works to this magazine because it has broad readership and visibility,” said Notaros. “I really value best paper awards, and I am proud to receive this honor from my esteemed peers.”
Notaros was presented the award at the 2022 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society’s annual conference in Denver.
Using ‘meteorological electromagnetics’ to advance the understanding of snow
Notaros is an expert in electromagnetics – a core area of ECE that enables an array of technological applications from Wifi to medical imaging.
Notaros is interested in the role of electromagnetics at the intersection of nature, science, and technology. He is pushing the boundaries of his field to study snowflakes and snowfall, the least understood aspects of the global water cycle.
Snow research is complicated. Because no two snowflakes are alike, the intricacies of snow are challenging to measure, analyze, and predict. In his winning paper, “Meteorological Electromagnetics: Optical and Radar Measurements, Modeling, and Characterization of Snowflakes and Snow,” Notaros coins the term “meteorological electromagnetics” to describe how electromagnetics and atmospheric science are converging to unravel the mysteries of nature and weather.
Notaros’ paper discusses his novel approach to the characterization of winter precipitation, and outlines opportunities for further collaborations between the electromagnetics and atmospheric science communities to overcome the challenges of snow research. The paper also highlights his involvement with a large-scale international field campaign at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Notaros is the author of several books and recipient of 10 major national and international awards for research and engineering education. In 2020, he was named president of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE.
