| Abstract |
Microwave imaging is a well funded and actively pursued research field
of modern high-frequency electromagnetics. This is largely due to the
fact that society holds high expectations for microwave technology to
solve some of its toughest problems in medical diagnostics,
nondestructive testing and security surveillance.
In this talk, the focus is on near-field imaging with microwaves, aiming
at practical approaches to biomedical imaging and detection for cancer
diagnostics. A brief critical review will be presented of the current
status of research—research which has been actively pursued for some
twenty years now but has not arrived yet at successful clinical trials.
Some exciting new ideas are being developed and evaluated at McMaster
University. These are going to be outlined and illustrated through examples.
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| Biography |
Natalia K. Nikolova received the Dipl. Eng. (Radioelectronics) degree
from the Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria, in 1989, and the Ph.D.
(Electrical Engineering) degree from the University of
Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1997. Her Ph.D. studies in
Japan (1994 to 1997) were supported by a Postgraduate Scholarship for
Foreign Students from the Government of Japan. From 1998 to 1999, she
held a Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (NSERC), during which time she was initially
with the Microwave and Electromagnetics Laboratory, DalTech, Dalhousie
University, Halifax, Canada, and, later, for a year, with the Simulation
Optimization Systems Research Laboratory, McMaster University, Hamilton,
ON, Canada. In July 1999, she joined the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, McMaster University, where she is currently a
Professor.
Her research interests include theoretical and computational
electromagnetism, high-frequency analysis techniques, nondestructive
testing and microwave imaging with applications in biomedical
diagnostics and security surveillance, as well as algorithms for
computer-aided design of microwave devices and antennas. She has
published more than 75 papers in engineering and physics journals, and
has contributed to more than 85 refereed conferences in the fields of
microwave and antenna engineering, theoretical electromagnetism,
numerical methods, etc.
Prof. Nikolova is the founder of the Computational Electromagnetics
Research Laboratory at McMaster University where she currently
supervises and co-supervises one post-doctoral fellow, a research
assistant, 4 Ph.D. and 5 M.A.Sc. students.
Dr. Nikolova held a University Faculty Award of NSERC from 2000 to 2003,
renewed to 2005. Since 2008, she is a Canada Research Chair in
High-frequency Electromagnetics.
She is a senior member of the IEEE (the Microwave Theory and Techniques
Society and the Antennas and Propagation Society), a correspondent of
the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and a member of the
Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES). She is a
registered Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario, Canada.
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