Meta-surfaces have emerged as a transformative platform for tailoring electromagnetic wave–matter interactions through subwavelength engineering. This talk will present recent advances in the design and realization of multifunctional meta-surfaces that simultaneously enable polarization conversion and high-sensitivity sensing with efficient RF energy harvesting. Emphasis is placed on ultrathin, compact architectures capable of achieving polarization control, broadband absorption, and angular stability while maintaining high figure-of-merit in refractive index sensing, particularly in terahertz regimes for biomedical applications such as tumor detection. The integration of tunable materials and reconfigurable mechanisms further enables adaptive functionalities, including switchable absorption and dynamic wave manipulation. Additionally, strategies for enhancing energy harvesting performance through impedance matching, multiband operation, and near-field coupling will be discussed.

Dr. Rajan Agrahari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna, India. He received his Ph.D. in electronics engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi, specializing in computational electromagnetics, nano-photonics, and metamaterials. Prior to joining NIT Patna, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the International Research Centre for Nano-photonics and Metamaterials, ITMO University, Russia, and has also held a research position at Pennsylvania State University, USA. Dr. Agrahari’s research contributions lie at the forefront of multifunctional meta-surfaces, terahertz sensing, RF energy harvesting, and advanced electromagnetic systems. His work has led to the development of ultrathin, reconfigurable meta-surfaces for applications in biomedical sensing, wireless energy systems, and next-generation communication technologies. He has published extensively in leading journals, with several of his works recognized as highly cited and top-viewed articles. He is the recipient of the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology Best Paper Award (2023), the MTT-S Outstanding Chapter Officer Award (2024), and the Young Professionals Excellence Award (WAMS 2026). He also holds multiple granted Indian patents in meta-surface and antenna technologies and leads several sponsored research projects funded by ISRO and other agencies.

Reconfigurable dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) have emerged as a key enabling technology for next-generation wireless systems, including 5G, 6G, and IoT applications. Owing to their inherent advantages, such as high radiation efficiency, low loss, wide bandwidth, and compact size, DRAs are increasingly integrated with reconfigurability features to achieve multifunctional performance. Recent trends focus on frequency, polarization, radiation pattern, and hybrid reconfiguration using techniques such as PIN diodes, varactors, MEMS, and tunable materials. Machine learning optimization and metamaterial-based approaches are also gaining attention for intelligent and adaptive antenna design. Advanced developments include mm-wave and terahertz DRAs, multi-mode excitation, and array configurations for beam steering and high-gain applications. These innovations address the growing demand for spectrum efficiency, cognitive radio, and energy harvesting systems. Overall, reconfigurable DRAs represent a promising solution for compact, flexible, and high-performance antennas in future wireless communication systems.

Dr. Pinku Ranjan is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Atal Bihari Vajpayee-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management (ABV-IIITM), Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India since 2019, with overall 15+ years of research and teaching experience. He completed his Ph.D. with integrated M.Tech in Electronics Engineering from IIT (ISM) Dhanbad in October 2017. He earned his B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from JNTU Hyderabad in 2010. He worked as a Junior and Senior Research Fellow (JRF/SRF) at IIT Dhanbad from August 2012 to July 2017, and later as a Research Assistant Professor in the ECE Department at SRM IST Chennai from June 2017 to March 2019. He has published over 150 research papers in national and international journals and conferences. Currently he is an Associate Editor of International Journal of Antennas and Propagation (Wiley). He also serves as a reviewer for several reputed journals and conferences and is associated with publishers like IEEE, IETE, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and IOP for the review process. His main research areas include Dielectric Resonator Antennas and Reconfigurable Antennas, MIMO and 5G Antennas, Monopole, Hybrid, and Circularly Polarized Antennas, Wearable Antennas and Bio-Electromagnetics, Metamaterial Antenna/absorber/Biosensors, Antenna for IoT Devices, Machine Learning and Deep Learning for antenna optimization, and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS). He is a Senior Member of IEEE and has supervised more than 35 M.Tech and 50 B.Tech students in their thesis work. Currently, he is guiding 6 Ph.D. scholars, with 2 Ph.D. degrees already successfully completed under his supervision. He received the Best Researcher Award in 2024 and the Atal Young Faculty Award in 2025 at ABV-IIITM Gwalior. He is a prestigious awardee of the “Young Faculty Research Fellowship (YFRF)” under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme for Electronics & IT, awarded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, in 2026. He has received 10 sponsored projects as PI/Co-PI, along with 2 Karyashala workshops and 1 Vritika program, funded by agencies like SERB, DoT, DST and ABV-IIITM.

This invited session is delivered under the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (APS) Young Professionals (YP) Ambassador Program and combines professional engagement with technical insight into emerging antenna technologies. The session begins with a brief overview of the IEEE YP and APS YP initiatives, emphasizing their role in supporting early-career engineers and researchers through technical knowledge dissemination, leadership development, and global networking within the antennas and propagation community. The technical portion features two focused overviews addressing key frontiers in antenna engineering. The first explores the evolution of on-chip antennas, driven by the growing demand for highly integrated RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave systems. Fundamental challenges such as extreme miniaturization, substrate losses, and impedance matching are discussed alongside innovative CMOS-compatible layouts and advanced design strategies that enable practical radiation directly from silicon platforms. The second overview addresses energy harvesting antennas as enablers of self-sustaining electronic systems for IoT, biomedical, and remote sensing applications. Design trade-offs involving efficiency, bandwidth, and rectification are examined, with emphasis on antenna–rectifier co-design, multi-band operation, and near- and far-field wireless power capture. Together, this session highlights how advances in antenna integration and wireless power are shaping the future of compact, autonomous, and sustainable wireless systems.

Dr. Arup Ray (Member, IEEE) received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in Electronics & Instrumentation and Communication Engineering from the University of Kalyani, India. He earned his Ph.D. degree in 2022, with his dissertation focused on the design methodologies and integration challenges of on-chip antennas with RF front-end circuits such as low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) and rectifiers. In 2022, Dr. Ray joined Qualcomm India Private Limited, Bangalore, as a Senior Engineer and is currently working as a Senior Lead Engineer in the RFIC team. His work involves electromagnetic modelling, RF component design, and coupling mitigation at the chip and package level, with a focus on innovation and performance optimization. He has contributed to three novel ideas at Qualcomm, all of which have been filed as U.S. patent applications. Dr. Ray is a corporate member of the IEEE and the Institution of Engineers (India). He has been actively involved in IEEE activities, having served as Chair of the IEEE AP-MTTS Student Branch Chapter at IIT Kharagpur. He has authored or co-authored nine journal papers and three conference papers in the areas of RFIC design, antenna integration, and electromagnetic simulation. He has also served as a peer reviewer for several international journals, including IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology, Springer Scientific Reports, IETE Journal of Research, and IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation.

In traditional electromagnetic systems, we typically rely on time-harmonic (continuous wave) signals. However, these signals are bound by a fundamental limitation: their power density decays relatively quickly as they travel. This talk introduces an alternative approach that challenges these conventional limits by utilizing specifically shaped, short-duration pulses. By shifting the focus from standard waves to “formed pulses” within rectangular waveguides, we can achieve a time-average power density that decays much slower than the conventional case. This phenomenon offers a promising path toward more efficient energy transmission. We will explore a preliminary understanding of why this works, specifically focusing on the “ultrawideband” effect. We have found that when a pulse’s spectrum is designed to fall off at a specific rate, it retains its intensity over much greater distances. This session will provide an intuitive look at the behavior of these pulses and discuss early results that could pave the way for new advancements in high-speed, high-efficiency electromagnetic structures.

Niharika Kaja is a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), specializing in computational electromagnetics under the mentorship of Dr. Deb Chatterjee. Her research focuses on the radiation characteristics of rectangular waveguides when subjected to short rise-time pulses. In addition to her doctoral studies, Niharika serves as a Research Assistant with the Missouri Institute of Defense and Energy (MIDE), where she contributes to the development of cavity-backed PGMS structures. A 2023 UMKC Master’s alumna, she is dedicated to bridging the gap between theoretical electromagnetic modeling and advanced engineered systems.

In the current modern digital warfare system, the electromagnetic spectrum plays an important role and the technology is moving from radio frequency to terahertz band. In the aerospace platform, weight and deployment play an important role along with the environmental and platform scattering effects. Computational electromagnetics depicts the electromagnetic analysis of EM devices in the real-time scenario including platform and environmental scattering analysis. The presentation will be focusing on various indigenous EM technologies developed including software tools and various devices across the entire spectrum.

Dr. Balamati Choudhury is working as Senior Principal Scientist at the Centre for Electromagnetics of CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, India. Her active areas of research and teaching interests are in the domain of stealth technologies, soft computing techniques in electromagnetic design and optimization, computational electromagnetics for aerospace applications, metamaterial design applications, and RF and microwaves. More specifically, the topics of sponsored projects she has contributed to include the development of ray tracing techniques towards RF analysis of propagation in an indoor environment, low RCS design, phased arrays and adaptive arrays, and conformal antennas. She was the recipient of the ICCCES Outstanding Young Investigator Award for the year 2016–2017 for her contributions in Metamaterial Science by ICCES, USA. She was also the recipient of the CSIR-NAL Young Scientist Award for the year 2013–2014 for her contribution in the area of Computational Electromagnetics for Aerospace Applications. Dr. Balamati has authored or co-authored over 320 scientific research papers and technical reports, besides four books, five Springer Briefs and three book chapters. Concurrently she is also contributing to academia as an Associate Professor of AcSIR and has been nominated as a Board of Studies member of RVCE by the Karnataka Government.

Earth’s atmosphere is opaque to cosmic photons in the X-ray and gamma-ray bands, making space-based observatories essential for studying high-energy astrophysical phenomena. This talk explores the nature of celestial X-ray sources — from X-ray binaries and neutron stars to active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts — and addresses the practical challenge of observing them from orbiting satellites. A central question in high-energy astrophysics scheduling is: when is a cosmic X-ray source actually visible? The answer is governed by a combination of factors — Earth occultation, passages through the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), and angular separation constraints from bright objects such as the Sun and Moon. Together, these effects can reduce the net science exposure of even a well-positioned source to a fraction of the total elapsed observation time. Finally, we discuss the key constraints that observers must account for when planning and scheduling X-ray observations — orbital geometry, seasonal visibility windows, and mission-specific instrument limitations — and how these shape the strategy for studying transient and persistent high-energy sources across the sky.

Dr. Himani Saini is a Senior Scientist at UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Bangalore. She received her MS in Industrial Mathematics and Informatics and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR). Her career in space science research and mathematical programming spans over a decade. Initially she worked on Launch Vehicle Programs; currently, as a mission expert, she is responsible for mission design, mission analysis, mission planning and mission operations for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellites. She is an Operation Director and Mission Director for various Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) and scientific missions. She has been involved in many ISRO programs for communication needs, social obligations and scientific missions in the areas of remote sensing, meteorology and inter-planetary exploration. She is the recipient of the ISRO Award for her major contributions and excellence. She has contributed to 31 Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites and 4 scientific missions, and has played a major role in Chandrayaan-2/3 and XPoSat missions. She is an IEEE Senior Member and was IEEE Computer Society Liaison for Women in Engineering (WIE) in 2024. She currently serves as a member of Women in Microwave (WiM), a subcommittee under MGA within the MTT-S AdCom. She holds several leadership roles including Vice Chair for IEEE GRSS Bangalore Chapter, Region-10 Professional Activity Committee (PAC) member, Secretary for IEEE-SA P7019 Working Group, and Editorial Board Member for the award-winning IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine.

The detection and monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO₂) are critical for ensuring environmental safety and air quality. An improved RF sensor is designed and implemented for the detection of CO₂ in the ambient environment. By exploiting the interaction between the electromagnetic field and the target gas molecules within a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR) structure, the proposed sensor exhibits a measurable shift in resonance characteristics corresponding to varying CO₂ concentrations. A CSRR with an embedded resistive feedline is used with an absolute sensitivity of 9% and a quality factor of 500 operating at 8 GHz. The sensor is fabricated on a 0.5 mm Rogers substrate to test CO₂ in two scenarios — with and without CNT/PEI:DAN (linear-Polyethyleneimine (PEI) and 1,5-Diaminonaphthalene (DAN)) coating in the sensing region. The sensor exhibits higher sensitivity with a CNT/PEI:DAN coating to detect carbon dioxide with N₂ as a control, achieving a measured sensitivity of 7.5 KHz/ppm of CO₂ gas sensing with a 100 nm coating.

Dr. Apala Banerjee is associated as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. She earned her PhD in RF and Microwave Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2024. Her research lies at the intersection of RF and microwave circuit design, high-sensitivity sensing, and electromagnetic characterisation of materials, with applications in healthcare, industrial inspection, wireless wearables, planetary and environmental science. Dr. Banerjee’s doctoral and postdoctoral work has focused on the design, simulation, fabrication, and experimental validation of planar RF and microwave sensors based on resonators, capacitive structures, and antennas. She has extensive experience with full-wave electromagnetic modelling and high-frequency measurement techniques. Her research also includes active RF front-end and sub-millimetre-wave receiver components, contributing to advanced wireless and sensing platforms. She has been associated with the Space Applications Centre (SAC–ISRO), Ahmedabad, on MMIC receiver design, GE Bengaluru for micro-crack detection in F-class Turbine Blades, and as a Project Scientist at IIT Kanpur focusing on microwave characterisation of planetary analogous rocks. At KAUST, her postdoctoral research encompasses RF biosensing and industry-collaborative projects with Saudi Aramco on microwave testing of adhesive bonds in oil pipelines. Dr. Banerjee is an active IEEE member serving as APS YP Ambassador, MTT-S Education Committee member, IEEE MTT-S Standing Committee member, Secretary of IEEE APS Technical Committee, and IEEE Women in Microwaves for Region 10. She has published over 30 international and national journal and conference papers and is a reviewer for Scientific Reports, IEEE T-MTT, IEEE TIM, IEEE JERM, and IEEE Sensors Journal.