Lab Director

George Shaker

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Engineering PhD, MASc, BASc, SMIEEE

Prof. George Shaker is the lab director of the Wireless Sensors and Devices Laboratory. As well, George is an adjunct professor with University of Waterloo at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. He is also with the University of Waterloo Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems (CIARS), Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB), and the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR), as well as overseeing the development of wireless technologies and sensors at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging. George has been with Spark Tech Labs since its founding in 2011, where he has held the roles of Principal Scientist and Head of Research. Previously, he was an NSERC scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology. He also held multiple roles with RIM's (BlackBerry).

With more than ten years of industrial experience in technology, and about five years as a faculty member leading projects related to the application of wireless sensor systems for healthcare, automotives, and unmanned aerial vehicles, Prof. Shaker has many design contributions in commercial products available from startups and established companies alike. A sample list includes: COM DEV , Blackberry, Konka, DBJ, Enice, Spark Tech Labs, China Mobile, TriL, Bionym, Lyngsoe Systems, ON Semiconductors, Ecobee, Medella Health, NERV Technologies, Novela, Thalmic Labs (North), General Dynamics Land Systems, General Motors, Toyota, Maple Lodge Farms, and Purolator.

Dr. Shaker has authored/coauthored 70+ publications and 15+ patents/patent applications. George was an invited speaker at several international events, including Keynote talks at the 2011 IEEE LAPC, the 2011 IEEE iThings, 2015 Ambient Intelligence, and short course lecturer at IEEE APS 2010. He has served as a TPC member of IEEE MTT-IMS, IEEE APS, IEEE EuCAP, IEEE iWAT, IEEE EMC, and IEEE WF-IoT. He is on the organizing committee of the International Antenna and Electromagnetics ANTEM conference, to be held in Waterloo, August 2018.

George has received multiple recognitions and awards, including the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship (sole winner in the area of Electromagnetics across Canada, first uWaterloo student to receive the scholarship in EM), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the European School of Antennas Grant at IMST-GmbH, the IEEE AP-S Best Paper Award (3, first UW student to receive the award), the IEEE AP-S Honorable Mention Best Paper Award (4 times to-date), the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Graduate Research Award (first UW student to receive the award), NSERC CGS-FSS (sole winner from UW Engineering), the IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship (first UW student to receive the fellowship),the Electronic Components and Technology Best of Session paper award, and the IEEE Sensors most popular paper award. Two papers he co-authored in IEEE journals were among the top 25 downloaded papers on IEEEXplore for several consecutive months. He was the supervisor of the student team winning the third best design contest at IEEE AP-S 2016, co-author of the ACM MobileHCI 2017 best workshop paper award, and the 2018 Computer Vision Conference Imaging Best Paper Award.