Zhengdao Wang
$19,992
Texas Tech University
Texas
Engineering (ENG)
The 2022 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC'22) is an annual international symposium that serves as a premier forum focused exclusively on presenting the latest state-of-the-art research results in radio-frequency (RF), millimeter-wave, and wireless integrated circuits (ICs). The RFIC'22 will be held at the Colorado Convention Center, June 19-21. The Symposium is part of Microwave Week 2022, the world's largest RF and microwave technical convention. Participation at RFIC'22 will expose US-based students to this critical research field of US national interests (e.g., 5G/6G wireless), enhance the research experiences for students, and provide increased opportunities for new collaborations to advance knowledge. However, attending RFIC'22 is getting more expensive each year (transportation, lodging, and registration fees all more costly), and not every researcher has the funds to allow their students to travel to RFIC'22. Moreover, undergraduate students are rarely getting the opportunity for funding as they are typically not engaging in research in their early career. Yet, young students' attendance is important because they represent the future of RFIC'22. Students also benefit tremendously by attending presentations on the latest research, making new connections, and participating in the various conference events. Thus, the NSF RFIC'22 travel grant can help increase student attendance in a significant manner. It is particularly useful to encourage student participation in RFIC'22 workshops, dedicated students forums, panels, demos, tutorials, exhibition, and attending papers presentations. The proposed activity may noticeably improve the participation of US-based students who are female, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields to RFIC'22. It will help enhance the STEM education proficiencies for US-based students. It can also help the development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce in the US, and increase partnerships between academia, industry, and government to increase economic competitiveness of the United States. RFIC'22 offers a number of events specifically beneficial to student researchers, which include technical talks, focused student forums (1st time in the RFIC Symposium history), interactive demo session, workshops, tutorials, technical lecture, exhibition, the three-minute thesis (3MT) competition program, and other targeted student activities. As IEEE RFIC Symposium is one of the world's premier events to learn about RF IC design, technology and research, students are able to obtain feedbacks on their work, talk with senior researchers from government, industry, and academia, and get exposed to the latest research. These activities provide the students the latest updates and direct interactions with world experts from government, industry, and academia, and provide unique training that is not possible from a typical university program. Over the last three years before the COVID-19 pandemic, RFIC Symposium has been a three-day event with over 900 registered attendees, including about 300 students annually and keep growing. We will use this NSF travel fund to fully fund the participation of 12 US-based students (i.e., covering the total cost). The NSF student travel grant program will be publicized on the RFIC'22 website and through special email blasts that will focus on students' activities; it will also be posted on social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). We will also reach out to faculty in US universities and ask them to publicize the grant and encourage their past and current class students to apply for it. The funding will be for full-time students from any U.S. university. RFIC'22 organizers seek to increase student participants by targeting women, undergraduates, and under-represented groups. The aim is to support young researchers who might not otherwise be able to attend RFIC'22 due to financial difficulty, as well as to encourage the diversity of the field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.