WIE Talks

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 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. She has been associated with the Space Applications Centre (SAC–ISRO) 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.