ECE Distinguished Seminar Series
Science of Computational Electromagnetics; a journey through its intellectual challenges
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Abstract:
The solution to Maxwell’s equation has been the basis of a slew of development over the past eight decades. These range from early radar systems to modern applications that are capturing imagination of engineers today: wearable sensors or antennas, antennas and sensors for driverless vehicles, threat detection scanners, non-invasive medical devices, advanced electromagnetic (EM) and acoustic materials. In exploring these applications, the state of art has advanced to an extent that it computational electromagnetics has become a routine part of the design eco-system. Indeed, more often than not, it is not uncommon for designers to ask whether measured data agrees with HFSS, a simulation software. It was not always this way. A couple of decades ago, the state of art of simulations was at its infancy. Problem that could be solved were electrically small and geometrically not sophisticated. The gradual transformation of the state of art happened in late 1990’s. The transformation was largely driven by both advances in computational horsepower as well new algorithms. In concert, we have achieved remarkable capabilities. That said, the richness of our electromagnetic environment implies that there are a range of problems that are still beyond the reach of our simulation capabilities. Challenges arise due to increase in frequency, behavior of materials at these frequencies, shape and topology optimization, transient physics, multi-physics challenges, packaging in relation to new circuit architectures, and so on. In this talk, I will walk through some the grand challenges (biased perspective, of course) that the community has overcome and our group’s role in these efforts. I will also diverge onto interesting intellectual forays into the intersection of computer graphics and computational electromagnetics as well as particle in cell methods for plasma physics.
Bio:
B. Shanker received his B’Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 1989, M.S. and Ph.D in 1992 and 1993, respectively, from The Pennsylvania State University. Currently, he is an Elizabeth and John Tinkham Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University from 2022. Between 2017-2022, he was a University Distinguished Professor (an honor accorded to about 2% of tenure system MSU faculty members) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Before he moved to Michigan State in 2002, he was a faculty member at Iowa State University and a visiting assistant professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, all in ECE. Immediately after his Ph.D., he worked on molecular theory of optical activity in Iowa State University.
At Michigan State University, he was appointed Associate Chair of the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering, a new department at MSU and was a key player in building this Department. Earlier, he served as the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2012-2015, and the Associate Chair for Research in ECE from 2019-2022. He has authored/co-authored around 450 journal and conference papers. His research interests include all aspects of computational electromagnetics (frequency and time domain integral equation based methods, multi-scale fast multipole methods, fast transient methods, higher order finite element and integral equation methods), propagation in complex media, mesoscale electromagnetics, and particle and molecular dynamics as applied to multiphysics and multiscale problems. He was an Associate Editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (AWPL), IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, and Topical Editor for Journal of Optical Society of America: A. He is a full member of the USNC-URSI Commission B. He is Fellow of IEEE (class 2010), elected for his contributions to time and frequency domain computational electromagnetics. He has also been awarded the Withrow Distinguished Junior scholar (in 2003), Withrow Distinguished Senior scholar (in 2010), the Withrow teaching award (in 2007), and the Beal Outstanding Faculty award (2014).