Professor Weng Cho Chew
Director
Center for Computational Electromagnetics and the Electromagnetics Laboratory,
University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

Inverse scattering finds application in many areas. There are many domains that can be easily reached by electromagnetic field, and hence, electromagnetic field for sensing finds applications in many different areas. In other words, electromagnetic probing allows us to see beyond what is commonly possible with our naked eyes. One simple way to solve inverse scattering problem is to use a linearization approximation. However, linearization approximation often is insufficient for many applications. Hence, an alternate and more accurate way is to solve the problem assuming a nonlinear relationship between the scattered field and the object. This talk reviews recent advances at the University of Illinois in solving the nonlinear inverse problem for practical subsurface sensing applications. One of the pressing problems in solving the nonlinear inverse problem is the computer time. We will discuss various attempts to reduce this bottleneck, and show the use of the processing algorithm for inverting some real-world data.

Weng Cho Chew received a B.S. degree in 1976, M.S. and Engineer's degrees in 1978, and Ph. D. in 1980, all in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. His research interest is in the area of waves in inhomogeneous media and complex structures for various sensing applications, integrated circuits, microstrip antenna applications, and fast algorithms for solving wave scattering and radiation problems. He is the originator of several fast algorithms for solving electromagnetics scattering and inverse problems.

He is now a professor at the University of Illinois, and he currently is the Director of the Center for Computational Electromagnetics and the Electromagnetics Laboratory there. Before coming to the University of Illinois, he was a department manager and a program leader at Schlumberger-Doll Research. He is an IEEE Fellow, an OSA Fellow, and an IOP Fellow, and was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator. He has been active with various journals and societies. He has authored a book entitled Waves and Fields in Inhomogeneous Media, co-authored a book entitled Fast and Efficient Methods in Computational Electromagnetics, authored and co-authored over 250 journal publications, and over 370 conference publications. He served on the IEEE Adcom for APS, received the Schelkunoff Best Paper Award for AP Transaction, the IEEE Graduate Teaching Award, Campus Wide Teaching Award, and was a Founder Professor of the College of Engineering, and currently, a Y.T. Lo Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois. Recently, ISI Citation elected him to the category of Most-Highly Cited Authors (top 0.5%).