André Vander Vorst - Biographical Statement#

Full CV (in French)

André Vander Vorst was born in Brussels, Belgium, 1935. He received the degrees of Electrical and Mechanical Engineer 1958, Ph.D. in Applied Sciences 1965, Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium, and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering 1965, M.I.T., USA. He has been associated with U.C.L., as assistant 1958, assistant professor 1962, associate professor 1968, professor 1972, and professor emeritus 2001.

From 1958 to 1964, he worked on fast switching of magnetic cores. With a post-doctoral fellowship, he was in the US from 1964 through 1966, first at M.I.T., then at Stanford University, both in the field of radio-astronomy.

In 1966, he founded the Microwave Laboratory at UCL, which he headed until 2001. Starting with research on loaded waveguides and cavities, he conducted research on atmospheric transmission and diffraction up to 300 GHz, and on designing and measuring active and passive circuits up to 100 GHz. His scientific interests have then been in optomicrowaves, humanitarian demining, and bioelectromagnetics.

He has been Head of the EE Department 1970-1972, Dean of Engineering 1972-1975, Vice-President of the Academic Council 1973-1975, and President of the Open School in Economic and Social Politics 1973-1987, all at UCL, Belgium. He has been teaching in four Belgian universities.

He has been a member of various committees on communications, microwaves, and education. He has been active in the IEEE Region 8 from 1967 through 2001, chairing at two occasions the Student Activities Committees, then for Educational Activities, then setting up the Chapter Coordination Committee, which increased significantly the number of Region 8 Chapters. He has been active in the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society from 1985 to 2006, and in the series of European Microwave Conferences, since the first one in London 1969. He is a Honorary Member of the National Committee of URSI after being a Member from 1969 through 2001, a member of CAPAS coordinating Science and Technology, and a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Letters and Science, class Technology and Society. He is a founder member of a number of associations, including The European Microwave Association, EuMA, of which he is Secretary General and Treasurer since 1998. He is a cofounder of the company Microwave Circuits and Systems, MiC6, Belgium.

He has authored or co-authored seven books, several book chapters, and more than three hundred scientific and technical papers published in international journals and proceedings of international conferences under peer review. He gave a number of invited papers in various international conferences. His last book, RF/Microwave Interaction with Biological Tissues, Wiley, co-authored with A. Rosen and Y. Kotsuka, was published in January 2006.

He is a fellow of IEEE 1985, for his contributions in atmospheric microwave propagation, satellite communication earth station design, and numerical analysis of microwave components. He is a member of Academia Europaea and The Electromagnetics Academy. He has obtained the SITEL Prize 1986, Belgium, the Meritorious Service Award of IEEE-MTT-S 1994, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal 2000, and several other awards.

He obtained the Microwave Career Award 2004 from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society "For a Career of Leadership, Meritorious Achievement, Creativity and Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Microwave Theory and Techniques".

He is a member of the Conseil Supérieur d’Hygiène, Belgium, and of the Gezondheidsraad, The Netherlands. He is cited in a number of Who’s Who, including Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in Engineering.