New Elected Adcom Members 2021

Four new members were elected to AdCom by the UFFC-S membership for two year terms (January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022). Contact information can be found for all AdCom members on the IEEE UFFC web page presenting AdCom and Associates.  

Oluwaseyi Balogun (Ultrasonics)

[mks_col] [mks_one_third]   [/mks_one_third] [mks_two_thirds] Oluwaseyi Balogun, (M’ 16): Oluwaseyi obtained a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 1998. He obtained the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Boston University in 2003 and 2006 respectively. Between 2006 and 2007, he trained as a post-doctorate fellow in the Materials Science Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University and worked as a visiting research scholar in the Engineering Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [/mks_two_thirds] [/mks_col] In 2007, he moved to Northwestern University first as a post-doctorate fellow, and later in 2008, he joined the faculty in the Departments of Mechanical and Civil and Environmental Engineering. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in these departments. Dr. Balogun’s major contributions to the ultrasonics field include; frequency-domain photoacoustic techniques for materials characterization and ultrasonic imaging of thin elastic films, membranes, micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, near-field optical techniques for high-resolution nanoacoustic imaging, and modeling of laser-generated ultrasound in solids, elastic wave propagation in elastic and viscoelastic (biofilms) solids. In recognition of the scholarly contributions from Oluwaseyi’s research group, one of his graduate students was selected as a finalist for the best student paper at the 2019 IEEE IUS. He was selected as the 2020 Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Nanotechnology (IEEE Nano.) Society and he received the award for Best Oral Presentation at the 2018 IEEE Nano. Conference, and the 2004 Technology Commercialization Institute award from Boston University. One of his graduate students received the 2015 ASNT fellowship award for their work on near-field optics and acoustics. Oluwaseyi is the author or co-author of over 70 journal articles and holds 2 patents. He has been a member of IEEE since 2016 and the Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society (UFFC-S) since 2018. He has served as the UFFC-S representative to the IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC) since 2018 and is a technical committee member for the Nanoacoustic group within the NTC. He has also authored and co-authored several IEEE T-UFFC journal papers and IUS conference proceedings since 2004.  

Kamal Asadi (Ferroelectrics)

[mks_col] [mks_one_third]   [/mks_one_third] [mks_two_thirds]   Kamal Asadi received his MSc. and PhD. in physics in 2005, and 2010, respectively from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His PhD thesis work was on realization of ferroelectric memory diodes and optoelectronic devices based on ferroelectric polymers. He filled two patents during his PhD work, and received the silver medal Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society in April 2010. [/mks_two_thirds] [/mks_col] He subsequently joined Philips Research Laboratories, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands where he worked on photonic materials and devices. His research activity at Philips on ferroelectric polymers and novel opto-electronic materials led to the realization of ZnO light-emitting diodes, and 6 patents, and unraveling the quantum mechanical nature of charge transport in organic semiconductors. He was subsequently awarded with the highly prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany to pursue his research on organic-inorganic multiferroelectric hybrids at the Max Planck Institute for polymer Research, in Mainz, Germany. His group is now actively working on the materials science, from synthesis through physics, of the various ferroelectric polymers for application in lead-free flexible optoelectronic devices as well as energy harvesters and sensors. He is member of the IEEE- ISAF society since 2015, and Materials Research Society since 2010. For the works on polymer-based ferroelectric devices, he was nominated for the Ferroelectric Young Investigator Award in 2015. For more than a decade, he has served as a bridging point between polymer chemists and polymer physicists with the microelectronic device community. He has also made a great service to the community by serving as the editor of Scientific Reports, as reviewer for many journals including Science- and Nature-series, as symposium organizer for Materials Research Society Meetings, as evaluator for European proposals, and as the editor of a book on organic ferroelectrics.  

Laura Popa (Frequency Control)

[mks_col] [mks_one_third]   [/mks_one_third] [mks_two_thirds]     Laura Popa was born in Bucharest, Romania and moved to the United States to pursue a college degree at Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania, where she majored in Physics. She received her Bachelor of Arts with honors in 2009, graduating summae cum laude. [/mks_two_thirds] [/mks_col] Following that, Laura received a PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015.  As part of her thesis, she conducted work in design and fabrication of novel piezoelectric gallium nitride Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) resonators for wireless communications, signal processing, and sensing applications. After completing her doctorate in 2015, Laura took on a MEMS Design Engineer position at Analog Devices in Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA. For the past 5 years, she has been designing and testing next generation inertial sensors from concept through commercialization. As part of this role, she has been leading cross-functional teams through design cycles and problem-solving activities which has given her significant experience in working with people from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Laura has been an active technical contributor within the UFFC society both in her graduate and post-graduate career. As a graduate student, she presented various papers at joint UFFC symposia. The paper presented IFCS 2014 in Taipei, Taiwan won her the best student paper award in Group 1 (Materials, Resonators, and Resonator Circuits). As an industry member, Laura delivered an invited talk at the Joint EFTF & IFCS meeting in Orlando, Florida, highlighting her current work at Analog Devices. After completing her graduate studies, Laura expanded her involvement in the UFFC community by joining the IFCS Technical Program Committee in 2016. Additionally, in 2019, she was invited to serve on the IFCS Standing Committee as the Women in Engineering Chair. As part of that role, she organized the Joint EFTF-IFCS Women in Engineering (WIE) workshop in Orlando, Florida and is currently working on planning the next WIE professional development workshop for the Joint IFCS-ISAF meeting in Keystone, Colorado. As an extension of this role, Laura also joined the UFFC Diversity and Inclusion Committee as IFCS representative. Additional contributions outside of UFFC include serving on the Technical Program Committee for EFTF since 2017 and being a reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS) since 2016.  

Alessandro Stuart Savoia (Regions 8-10)

[mks_col] [mks_one_third]   [/mks_one_third] [mks_two_thirds]     Alessandro Stuart Savoia (M’04) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland (UK), in 1978. He received the Laurea degree (M.S.) in Electronics Engineering from Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy, in 2003. He obtained his PhD in Electronics Engineering from the same University, in 2007. [/mks_two_thirds] [/mks_col] His thesis research was focused on the numerical and experimental investigation of novel Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) structures for advanced medical imaging applications. In the years 2007-2013 he has held a postdoctoral research position at the Department of Electronics Engineering of the same University. In the years 2008-2010 he participated, as a co-founder and R&D Manager, in an academic spin-off company of Roma Tre University in collaboration with the medical device company Esaote S.p.A., granted by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR), for the industrial exploitation of the scientific results on MEMS micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs), most of them achieved in the frame of his PhD and postdoctoral research. In 2014, he became Assistant Professor in Electronics at the Department of Engineering of Roma Tre University. In 2017, he obtained the National Scientific Qualification (ASN) for Associate Professor in the scientific field “Electronics”. He leads research activities at the Acoustoelectronics Laboratory (ACULAB, Department of Engineering of Roma Tre University) mainly in the field of ultrasonic transducers and their applications. During his scientific career, he has focused on MEMS micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs and PMUTs) analytical and FEM modeling, design, microfabrication and packaging technologies, characterization, electronic interfacing circuits, and system integration. His research interests also include ultrasound beamforming and imaging techniques for biomedical and biometry applications. He has authored and co-authored more than ninety international journal and conference papers in the ultrasonics field, most of them published in IEEE Transactions and IEEE Conference Proceedings, and a number of book chapters. He holds four international patents. He has extensive collaborations with national and international research institutions and within the healthcare and semiconductor industry in the frame of publicly and privately funded projects. He is currently involved as Principal Investigator in one national and two European research projects, as well as in three research contracts with large companies, all in the field of MEMS micromachined ultrasonic transducers. He has been active within the UFFC society since 2004, initially as a reviewer and successively, since 2017, as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Group 5 “Transducers and Transducer Materials”, of which he became co-chair in 2019. He is participating in the Organizing Committee of the 2022 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (Venice, Italy) as Local Arrangements Chair. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Workshop on Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers.