In Memoriam

Michael Shur

Michael Shur passed away on June 5, 2026, at the age of 83. He was born on November 13, 1942, in Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk Oblast, USSR. In 1965, he graduated from the Electrotechnical Institute in Leningrad (presently St. Petersburg), USSR, with the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering. In 1967, he received his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the A.F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the USSR National Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. From 1968 to 1976, Prof. Shur was a Junior Researcher and later Senior Fellow Researcher at the A.F. Ioffe Institute. Later, he became Full Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (1979-1989), John Marshall Money Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Applied Electro-physics... More

Young-kai Chen

Young-Kai “Y.K.” Chen passed away on May 1, 2026. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from National Chiao Tung University in 1976, the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Syracuse University in 1980, and the Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1988. His professional career started at the Electronics Laboratory of General Electric, working on silicon and GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits for phased-array applications. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988 as a member of the Compound Semiconductor Device Research Department. He subsequently served as Department Head of Heterostructure Electronics Research and Director of High-Speed Electronics Research. He later held senior technical leadership positions at Lucent Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Bell Labs, and... More

Mauro Mongiardo

Mauro Mongiardo passed away on February 5, 2026, at the age of 66. He received the laurea degree (110/110 cum laude) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1983. He became Associate Professor of Electromagnetic Fields in 1991 and Full Professor in 2001 at the University of Perugia. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE “for contributions to the modal analysis of complex electromagnetic structures” in 2013. During the years 2008-2010, Prof. Mongiardo served as associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. For several decades, he was member of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee on Design Automation (MTT-S TC-2, formerly MTT-1 on Computer-Aided Design). Prof. Mongiardo was... More

Ho Chung Huang

Ho Chung Huang passed away on January 18, 2026, at the age of 89 years old. He was born in Zhang Zhou, Fujian Province, China, to the late Kuan-Liang Huang and Su-Cheng Chang Huang. He was the husband of Hedy Huang, who survived him. In addition to his loving wife, Dr. Huang is survived by his daughter Audrey Huang, and her husband, Chris Bradford, of Cambridge, MA, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. Dr. Ho Chung Huang graduated from the National Taiwan University (NTU). He did his Master’s and Doctorate postgraduate studies in Electrical Engineering at Cornell University. For more than 50 years, Dr. Ho Huang performed outstanding engineering work at Monsanto, RCA Laboratories,... More

André Vander Vorst

André Vander Vorst passed away on December 25, 2025. He was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1935. He received the degree of Electrical and Mechanical Engineer in 1958 and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences in 1965 from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. As a NATO Fellow, he was a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1964 to 1965, where he obtained the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering, and at Stanford University from 1965 to 1966, working in the field of radio astronomy. In 1966, Prof. Vander Vorst founded the Microwave Laboratory at UCL in Belgium. Under his direction for more than three decades, the laboratory became internationally recognized... More

Fred E. Gardiol

Fred E. Gardiol passed away on December 2, 2025, at the age of 90 years old. He was born in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. He graduated in Engineering Physics at the Ecole Polytechnique de l’Université of Lausanne (EPUL), Switzerland in 1960. He obtained in 1965 a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1969, he received the Doctorate in Applied Science from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. While doing his master’s at MIT, Fred Gardiol had a research job in Raytheon SMDO, Waltham, MA, where he developed high-power microwave ferrite devices. Afterwards, he focused his doctoral research at UCL on the theoretical modeling of some loaded waveguided devices he... More

Andreas C. Stelzer

Andreas C. Stelzer passed away on June 6, 2025, and was born in Haslach an der Mühl, Austria, in 1968. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, in 1994. In 2000, he received the Dr. Techn. degree in mechatronics from the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) with special honors (“Promotio sub auspiciis Praesidentis rei publicae under the auspices” of the Austrian president), granted only to those with the best possible grades from high school to the final doctoral exam. In 2000, he joined the Institute for Communications and Information Engineering of JKU in Linz. After finishing his postdoctoral qualification in 2003, he became an associate professor at JKU.... More

Allen Katz

Dr. Allen Katz, professor of Electrical/Computer Engineering at The College of New Jersey, passed away on June 20, 2024. He was founder and president of Linearizer Technology, Inc., which now includes Linear Photonics, LLC and Linear Space Technology, LLC. He received his doctorate and baccalaureate degrees in electrical engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers University. Dr. Katz holds 17 patents and wrote more than 100 technical publications. He received the IEEE’s Microwave Society’s (MMT-S) Application Award in 2015 for his work in linearization, the IEEE Microwave Magazine Best Paper Award in 2010 and the William Randolph Lovelace II Award for outstanding contributions to space science... More

Vladimir G. Gelnovatch

Vladimir (Walt) G. Gelnovatch of Belmar died on March 1, 2024 and was born in Manhattan, NY, 1938. He was a Life Fellow of IEEE and served the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society as President in 1989. He was a graduate of New York University Graduate School of Engineering, obtaining an MSEE followed by course work at NYU’s doctoral program. He was an electrical engineer and worked for the U.S. Army for 40 years at Fort Monmouth as the Director of the Electric Devices Laboratory. Following retirement, he worked as an independent consultant to the Army and industry until 2008. He spent 10 years as a visiting professor of Electrical Engineering at the University... More

John W. Bandler

John W. Bandler, Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and former Dean of Engineering at McMaster University, passed away on September 28, 2023, at the age of 81 years. Prof. Bandler was an engineer, entrepreneur, innovator, researcher, artist, speaker, and author of fiction, including stage plays (see his YouTube channel for examples). He published more than 500 technical papers, pioneered space mapping, and won several awards, including both the Microwave Application and Microwave Career Awards from IEEE MTT-S. He was the founder of Optimization Systems Associates Inc. in 1983, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard in 1997. His innovations transformed engineering design optimization, especially the optimal design of RF and microwave components and circuits... More

Richard A. Sparks

Richard A. (Dick) Sparks Sr., of Nashua, NH, age 90 entered into eternal rest on December 18, 2021. Dick is survived by his loving wife of 65 years, Dorothy (Dottie), their 6 children, Barbara, Richard, Timothy, Kathleen, James, and Thomas; also survived by 8 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren. Dick had a love of the sea and boating. He joined the Navy at age 18 and advanced to the rank of Seaman Petty Officer First Class. After being honorably discharged, Dick attended college graduating Cum Laude in 1958, with a BA in Physics and majors in Chemistry and Mathematics. He met Dottie at their church and married in 1956. In the summer of 1958 they, along... More

Ferdo Ivanek

Ferdo Ivanek, life fellow of the IEEE, passed away on 2 October, 2021 at the age of 98. He was married to Vojka who passed away in 2010 and has two sons Ivan and Željko. Vojka was project manager at Stanford University for decades and accompanied Ferdo to many of the IEEE International Microwave Symposia throughout the years. Ferdo Ivanek received the Dipl. Ing. and Dr. techn. Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University in Vienna, Austria. Until 1967 he worked in Yugoslavia on the introduction of microwave radio systems, on radio equipment design and manufacturing start-up. From 1959-1962, he was on leave of absence for research at the Microwave Laboratory, Stanford University. In... More

Vittorio Rizzoli

Professor Vittorio Rizzoli was born January 26, 1949 and  passed away on August 25, 2021. He earned his degree in Electronic Engineering in 1971 at the University of Bologna, Italy. He worked at the Hewlett Packard Company (USA) prior to joining the University of Bologna as a Research Assistant teaching a course on microwave integrated circuits. He was elevated to Full Professor in Electromagnetic Fields at the University of Bologna in 1980. His main focus was on modern CAD techniques as applied to electromagnetic (EM) design of microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits. This work afforded him the opportunity to author or co-author more than 220 technical papers. Many of these have been published in refereed... More

Tatsuo Itoh

Professor Tatsuo Itoh was born May 5, 1940, in Tokyo, Japan, and passed away on 4 March 2021. He had an incredible career and his list of accomplishments is very extensive. He earned his various degrees at several venues, starting with the Yokohama National University. After spending some time in industry, at NEC and Olympus;he went on to teaching at many places in the US. They include universities in Kentucky, Illinois, California, Texas and his latest being UCLA. During his career he demonstrated the design of many millimeter wave components. Some used planar transmission lines, quasi-optical analysis techniques, quasi-optical receiver elements and antennas. He served in many capacities in the IEEE MTT-S Society such as... More