In Memoriam

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