Pai-Yen Chen named UIC Rising Star
Pai-Yen Chen named UIC Rising Star Heading link
Associate Professor Pai-Yen Chen received the 2023 UIC Researcher of the Year Award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR), in their 2023-24 UIC Research and Scholarship Annual Award competition. Chen was named as the Rising Star in the Natural Sciences and Engineering category. The Rising Star Award is “bestowed on individuals who show exceptional promise to become future leaders.”
According to the OVCR, the awards “celebrate the efforts and commitment of individuals who have made exceptional progress advancing knowledge in their area of research and scholarship, inspiring and promoting continued excellence at UIC.”
Chen conducts multidisciplinary research on applied electromagnetics, RF and microwave antennas and circuits, wireless sensors and systems, nanophotonics and nanoelectronics, and quantum information science and engineering, or QISE.
Chen joined UIC in 2018 and has received several honors, including an IEEE Sensors Council Young Professional Award and Union Radio Scientifique Internationale (URSI) Young Scientist Award in 2017, a 2018 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a SPIE Rising Researcher Award in 2018, IEEE Raj Mittra Travel Grant (RMTG) Award in 2018, an Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Early Career Award in 2019, and he was named an IOP Emerging Leader in Measurement Science and Technology in 2021. This year, Chen was appointed a Distinguished Lecturer of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Sensors Council for 2024 through 2026.
“I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Pai-Yen for being honored with the UIC Researcher of the Year Award,” said Daniela Tuninetti, professor and head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. “This prestigious award is a testament to his hard work, dedication, and the significant scholarly achievements he has accomplished.”
Awardees will be honored at a ceremony on Wednesday, April 17 at the Field Museum as part of the inaugural UIC Research Week.
Chen has five concurrent grants totaling approximately $2 million. He is actively recruiting graduate students in electromagnetics and radio-frequency integrated circuits to explore emerging topics such as device-circuit co-design, antenna-on-chip/antenna-in-package, heterogenous integration and 3D IC packaging, silicon photonics, physical unclonable function (PUF)-based encryption, non-Hermitian wave systems, and quantum electrodynamics in his research group.