DIT’s Dr Adam Narbudowicz wins CONNECT Centre’s Excellence in Research Award
Dr Adam Narbudowicz, a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Max Ammann's team at the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering in DIT, has won the inaugural 'Tom Brazil CONNECT Excellence in Research Award' from CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland research centre for future networks and communications.
Adam received the award for ground-breaking research on full-duplex radios, which could lead to more secure wireless communications, and networks capable of supporting many more devices at one time.
“A full-duplex radio doubles the communication speed of a wireless device as it can simultaneously transmit and receive signals – a feature currently not implemented in any commercial wireless product. Its benefits are so great that this research area is sometimes called the holy grail of telecommunications,” Adam explains.
“My focus is on the design of the antennas used in these wireless systems. The antenna’s performance is vitally important for the operation of the radio. A perfect full-duplex antenna is capable of transmitting and receiving simultaneously, but cannot be more than 50% energy efficient.”
Congratulating Dr Narbudowicz, Prof. Max Ammann said:
“This is a well-deserved recognition of Dr Narbudowicz’s ability to combine basic theoretical research with commercially-oriented investigation.
“This is his third award in under a year, having already won prizes at the International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP) in Thailand, and just recently during the IEEE-EURASIP Summer School on Signal Processing in Italy.
“His research on the fundamental efficiency limits of antennas for full duplex radio has been accepted for publication in IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. This is a top-tier telecommunications journal with an impact factor of 9.2, and an indicator of the quality of his research.”
The Excellence in Research award was named in memory of Prof. Tom Brazil, a principal investigator at the CONNECT Centre in UCD, who died unexpectedly earlier this year.
Adam is an EDGE research fellow. EDGE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Action offering prestigious fellowships for experienced researchers moving to Ireland. He has also held an IRC Elevate Fellowship. He collaborates with Prof. Nicola Marchetti’s complex systems research group in Trinity College Dublin.
He is also researching ways of improving security for Internet of Things devices, which are becoming increasingly common in homes and work places and is leading a project on radar to accurately detect drones. The work, conducted at Prof. Ammann’s Antenna and High Frequency Research Centre, has already won funding from Enterprise Ireland, and has been supported by the NDRC pre-commercialisation boot camp.