Iltcho Angelov receives prestigious award for pioneering work in microwave electronics

The award was presented by the European Microwave Association during the 2024 edition of the European Microwave Week in Paris at the end of September. As Iltcho Angelov receives the organization’s most prestigious award for his significant efforts in the field, he becomes the fourth Pioneer Award recipient in the event's 27-year history. A separate celebration was held at the Division of Microwave Electronics Laboratory earlier this week, giving the closest colleagues the opportunity to congratulate the award winner. And Iltcho himself wishes to highlight the importance of good collaboration, a friendly work environment and fine support from colleagues - at Chalmers and internationally - that has marked his career for decades.

"This award is not only for me but also for the Microwave Electronics Laboratory and the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience. It shows our level of work and how we do things here. We do things properly and in the best possible way. I wrote a lot of equations, pages of code, thousands of mails to software companies, but I was not alone. To create something substantial we need an environment. Our department MEL is a nice, friendly, working environment. This stimulates people to give their best. I think it’s important to mention that because of this nice working environment, people find it stimulating to do things at a very high level. And our PhD students are generally of better quality compared with Europe and the rest of the world. The quality of their work is generally higher, and they get more results published. The colleagues at the department have been with me in their support, we have been doing so many things together, as well as with many colleagues and friends around the world. We’ve had a lot of fun doing things together and we continue to do new things. I specially want to mention colleagues from MEL: Herbert Zirath, Niklas Rorsman, Christian Fager, Dan Kuylenstierna, Mattias Thorsell. And some of the colleagues around the world: U. Rohde, S. Maas, M.Rudolph, D. Schreurs, colleagues from Mitsubishi and M. Mierzwinski, F. Sischka, E. Schmidt, G. Paulavicius, D. Root from Keysight as well as Jushan Xie, P. O’Halloran, from Cadence,” says Iltcho. 

The jury’s motivation says, among other things, that "Iltcho Angelov is a trailblazer in the field of electronic modelling, recognized for pioneering the development of the first comprehensive large signal FET models. The impact of Iltcho’s work extends globally, with numerous researchers worldwide leveraging his models to tailor their studies to specific devices such as GaN, GaAs, CMOS, and SOI. Widely adopted across different foundries and companies, his models have become indispensable tools in the electronic industry. Transitioning to Chalmers University in 1991, Iltcho contributed significantly to millimetre-wave MMIC projects at the Department of Electron Physics, now known as the Microwave Electronics Lab (MEL). His pursuit of accurate device modelling led to the development of pioneering large signal models for HEMTs, a breakthrough that garnered international recognition and rapid adoption in commercial CAD tools.”

In their motivation, the EuMA jury sees Iltcho's contribution as instrumental looking towards the future, with ongoing efforts to integrate new charge and charge-current capacitance definitions into CAD tools, to further improve the capacity and usability of transistor models. And on that note, Iltcho makes sure to come with an important update. 

“We have already achieved this, they are in the latest versions of circuit simulators,” says Iltcho.

Read more about the EuMA awards here