News

Dr. Raafat Mansour, a professor and University Research Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has been selected to receive the 2026 Distinguished Educator Award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S).

This prestigious international honour recognizes educators who have made exceptional and lasting contributions to the field of microwave engineering and science, while exemplifying the spirit of the late Fred J. Rosenbaum — a visionary who viewed teaching as a calling and dedicated his career to advancing the MTT-S community through mentorship and service.

Dr. Mansour’s award citation reads:

“For Outstanding Achievements as an Educator, Mentor, and Role Model of Microwave Engineers and Engineering Students.”

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is deeply saddened by the loss of Professor Kostadinka Bizheva, fondly known as Dida, whose pioneering work in biomedical optics advanced both science and clinical practice.

Electrical and computer engineering PhD student, Trevor Blaikie, has been selected as the winner of the NAMBE 2024 Best Journal Paper Award. Trevor’s research, supervised by Dr. Zbig Wasilewski, earned top recognition for the paper titled “Optimizing GaAs/AlGaAs growth on GaAs (111)B for enhanced nonlinear efficiency in quantum optical metasurfaces.”

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is proud to celebrate the outstanding achievement of Dr. Ahmed Sayed, a former PhD student in our department, who has been awarded the Best PhD Thesis Award from Drones. Drones is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by MDPI—a pioneer in scholarly, open-access publishing, supporting academic communities since 1996.

Dr. Ladan Tahvildari, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has been named a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society,—an honour that celebrates her long-standing dedication and impactful contributions to the advancement of the computing field worldwide.

Dr. Adel Sedra, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and former Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Canada’s Semiconductor Council. The prestigious honour was presented at the Council’s Annual Awards Dinner in Ottawa last week.

Congratulations to Zhenan Liu, a MASc student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, whose ground-breaking research has earned international recognition. Liu’s paper, “Real-Time 4D Radar Perception for Robust Human Detection in Harsh Enclosed Environments,” has received Honorable Mention in the prestigious 2025 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Student Paper Competition.

Dr. Xuemin (Sherman) Shen, University Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has been named one of the world’s leading scientists in electronics and electrical engineering. In the 2024 edition of its annual global ranking, Research.com places Dr. Shen at #18 worldwide and #1 in Canada—a reflection of his extraordinary impact in the field.

In an exciting achievement for the research community, the paper titled "Radar Near-Field Sensing Using Metasurface for Biomedical Applications" has been recognized as one of the Top 25 most downloaded papers in Nature Communications Engineering for 2024.

Electrical and computer engineering professor, Dr. Ladan Tahvildari has been named an IBM Champion for 2025. This prestigious recognition is awarded in acknowledgment of her exceptional leadership and significant contributions to the IBM technology community over the past year.