Douglas McMakin

Doug McMakin is an internationally recognized innovator in millimeter-wave imaging applications. He has vast experience in working with government, commercial, and university partners to develop innovative, field-deployable prototypes and commercial systems using system engineering techniques. As a project manager and technical lead at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for 30+ years, he led numerous holographic radar imaging research and development projects. Most notable was developing and commercializing the first-of-its-kind near-real-time millimeter-wave systems for airport personnel screening for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. These systems are now operating in more than 250 airports and other facilities worldwide. He also led the development of technology for body measurements for biometrics and clothing applications. McMakin has received 20 U.S. patents, authored or co-authored more than 50 publications, received national awards for innovation and technology transfer, and presented papers at numerous national and international conferences and symposiums. He was personally acknowledged by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security for providing technical advice and special support to the Commission, and he received the Homeland Security Award from the Congressionally established Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation.

In 2019, McMakin launched Imago IQ LLC, a consulting company for ultrasonic and millimeter-wave imaging applications. His focus is conceiving, developing, and testing practical electronic instrumentation for real-world government and commercial applications using ultrasonics, radiofrequency, radar, and terahertz technologies. McMakin hold a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University and a M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix.

After more than 30 years of technology development, near-field radar imaging is poised for widespread deployment across numerous NDE applications. This technology has greatly benefited from significant investments from emerging markets such as telecommunications (5G), collision avoidance radar, and artificial intelligence (AI). These investments have significantly lowered the bill-of-material hardware costs of these systems and increased processing speeds, enabling real-time synthetic imaging with GPUs. In addition, novel and efficient image reconstruction algorithms have been developed that can be used across the electromagnetic spectrum from RF (300MHz) to THz (1000GHz). These advanced algorithms enable developers to select the system operational frequency to optimize performance for either better penetration through optical opaque dielectric barriers, or higher resolution. Furthermore, these NDE systems can be configurated for various sizes and scanning approaches such as planar, cylindrical, or even free form. The first widespread application for this technology was airport personnel screening for security, using a first-generation cylindrical scanning configuration developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Doug McMakin, one of the original inventors, will discuss the development of this technology and other NDE applications including through-wall/barrier, shoe scanning, ground-penetrating radar, medical applications, space-based applications, and AI for automatic detection. Mr. McMakin will also share future NDE opportunities and challenges for commercialization and deployment.

Prof. Ali M. Niknejad

Ali M. Niknejad received the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000 where he now holds the Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professorship chair in the EECS department at UC Berkeley and he is a faculty co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC). He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Converged TeraHertz Communications and Sensing (ComSenTer). Prof. Niknejad received the 2020 SIA/SRC University Research Award, recognized “for noteworthy achievements that have advanced analog, RF, and mm-wave circuit design and modeling, which serve as the foundation of 5G+ technologies.” Prof. Niknejad is the recipient the 2017 IEEE Transactions On Circuits And Systems Darlington Best Paper Award, the 2017 Most Frequently Cited Paper Award from 2010 to 2016 of the Symposium on Very Large-Scale Integration Circuits, the CICC 2015 Best Invited Paper Award, and the 2012 ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award. His students recevied the 2013 and 2010 Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper, and he was the co-recipient of the Outstanding Technology Directions Paper at ISSCC 2004. He is a co-founder of LifeSignals and RF Pixels, a 5G technology startup. His research interests lie within the area of wireless and broadband communications and biomedical imaging and sensors, integrated circuit technology (analog, RF, mixed-signal, mm-wave), device physics and compact modeling, and applied electromagnetics.

Today’s commercial CMOS technology allows circuits to operate to 100’s of GHz, opening up new applications that have the potential to revolutionize communications, imaging, sensing, and signal processing. In this talk we will highlight technology demonstrations in CMOS that demonstrate the potential for building biosensors to detect dielectric properties of materials from microwave to sub-THz frequencies in an integrated circuit platform. We will begin with a overview and measurement results for an interferometry-based dielectric flow cytometer “lab on a chip” platform for detecting the dielectric constant of cells up to 30 GHz with high accuracy. Next we show the possibility to integrate multi-modal sensors into the same platform, for example simultaneous optical and microwave measurements allow one to gain complementary insights into sensor readings. Finally we will cover an architecture that allows similar measurements to be made up to 300 GHz, with measured results on biological samples up to 100 Hz.

Prof. J.-C. Chiao

J.-C. Chiao is Mary and Richard Templeton Centennial Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Southern Methodist University (SMU). He received his PhD at Caltech and was with Bellcore, University of Hawaii-Manoa and Chorum Technologies. He was Greene endowed professor and Garrett professor of Electrical Engineering at University of Texas - Arlington in 2002–18. Dr. Chiao has published more than 260 peer-reviewed papers and received 15 patents. He received the 2011 O'Donnell Award in Engineering presented by The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas. He received the Tech Titan Technology Innovator Award; Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Excellence in Engineering Teaching Award; Research in Medicine milestone award by Heroes of Healthcare; IEEE MTT Distinguished Microwave Lecturer; IEEE Sensors Council Distinguished Lecturer; IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Engineering Educator and individual Achievement awards. He was the founding Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology. Currently, he serves as Track Editor for IEEE Journal of Microwaves, Editorial Board member of IEEE Access, IEEE 2021 Wireless Power Transfer Conference technical program chair, and chair for IEEE 2022 Sensors Conference.

Mobile technologies have changed our life style significantly. Wearable and implantable devices through wireless power transfer and signal communication have been utilized in healthcare to provide unique functions, convenience and accuracy with lower costs. Individuals can be empowered with tailored solutions without limitation in mobility or daily activities. Quantitative documentation of physiological parameters presents more accurate assessment. Direct stimulation on tissues or organs by electrical signals can restore or improve body functions. Continuous monitoring and sequential administration of therapy to treat symptoms via wireless body networking can adaptively optimize the closed-loop health management. This presentation discusses the past development of wireless micro devices and integrated systems for clinical applications. The systems are based on batteryless, wireless implants with enhancement in miniaturization and functionalization. Several diagnosis and therapeutic treatment examples will be introduced. In order to advance the applications, noninvasive electromagnetic sensors are considered for practical implementation to avoid implantation. A hydration sensor based on microwave resonators will be discussed.

Christina Morency

Dr. Christina Morency joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011 as full time research staff in the Computational Geosciences Group. She is a geophysicist specialized in seismic and electromagnetic wave propagation modeling and inverse problems, to better image and investigate the subsurface in the context of energy, security, and environmental issues. She has 13 years of expertise in spectral-element and adjoint inverse methodologies. Before joining LLNL, she received her Ph.D in Geophysics from Ecole Normale Superieure/Paris XI University in Paris, France.

In this contribution, we highlight the use of electromagnetic (EM) techniques for subsurface imaging and characterization. We will first introduce our in-house EM wave propagation code based on spectral-element method, which provides the flexibility to handle complex geometries of finite-element methods, and retains the strength of exponential convergence and accuracy, due to the use of high-degree polynomials to interpolate field functions on the elements. This capability has been added to the open-source SPECFEM written for seismic wave propagation, offering a single tool capable of handling EM and seismic wave equations. Subsurface characterization relies predominantly on seismic techniques, but when trying to specifically monitor fluid, like it is the case, for example, with geothermal and carbon storage monitoring, or monitoring of water at the base of glacier ice sheets, EM approaches are of interests as they are sensitive to fluid properties. We will show synthetic numerical examples of surface and airborne GPR types of applications. We will specifically highlight the complementarity of EM and seismic surveys. Finally, we will introduce EM full waveform inversion based on adjoint method on some toy problems and discuss strategies to iteratively invert for both dielectric permittivity and electrical conductivity.

Prof. Yiming Deng

Dr. Yiming Deng, is an Associate Professor in the Nondestructive Evaluation Laboratory of Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Michigan State University. He is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Materials Evaluation and RAMS Proceedings. He serves as panelist and reviewer for NSF, DOE, DOT, DoD and over 30 scientific journals. He has external research funding from NSF, DOE, DOT, PHMSA, DoD, GTI, NIH, GTI, NJH, ASNT and private industries. He is interested in developing novel NDE/SHM sensors and sensing systems that involve multi-physics simulations for better understanding sensing physics, and ultimately optimize the complex systems operations, e.g. by reducing the uncertainties and maintenance costs. His research group is also conducting experimental validation as well as sensor prototyping for a wide range of engineering applications by collaborating with industry to assure critical energy and transportation infrastructures safety, security, reliability and sustainability. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 100 conference papers/presentations. Dr. Deng is the recipient of ASNT faculty award in 2010 and 2017.

With the advances in measurement physics, computational sciences and data analytics, the scope of NDE is constantly expanding. State-of-the-art quantitative NDE techniques are not limited to damage detection and characterization, but extended to better understand the operational risks and remaining life of components, structures and systems (CSSs), which requires synergistic effort among academia and industry to come up with a more comprehensive and holistic approach to prevent unexpected failure and achieve optimized operation and maintenance management for CSSs. Identifying materials’ distinguishing abnormalities or signs of abnormalities, and deterioration of the overall health of CSSs from materials state awareness perspective is critical for diagnosis in NDE. Damage and/or damage precursor sensitive information provided by diagnosis are useful in further predicting the future health state of CSSs, e.g., remaining useful life through prognosis methodologies. Meanwhile, uncertainty analysis is a key aspect in NDE measurements, where uncertainties could propagate through the entire NDE system as systematic error and/or random error accumulate. Therefore, uncertainties quantification (UQ) should be integrated into NDE and is of critical importance to address measurement variability and understand its probabilistic behavior. This presentation will cover state-of-the-art diagnostic, prognostic, UQ techniques through an application in fatigue damage identification, estimation and RUL prediction using electromagnetic and ultrasonic methods.

Anish Poudel

Anish Poudel is the Principal Investigator for Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) within the Research and Development department of the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI). Dr. Poudel holds a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Mechanical Engineering with the focus on NDE.

At TTCI, Dr. Poudel currently provides technical leadership and manages various on-site and off-site inspection and detection research projects both in North America and overseas. In this role, he is playing a key role and serve as a technical lead in the research, development, and testing of advanced NDE and automated wayside inspection technologies for nondestructive characterization of railroad components to optimize their safety, integrity, and life costs.

Dr. Poudel has received numerous prestigious recognition both in the field of NDE and railway research. He was the recent recipient of the 2019 International Heavy Haul Association (IHHA) Emerging Railway Professionals Award. He has also received the 2018 ASNT Mentoring Award and 2014 ASNT Young NDT Professional Award.

Dr. Poudel brings over 10 years of research, development, and testing experience in the field of NDE for different applications. He has authored over 80 technical publications and presentations in the field of NDE and have 1 patent.

Dr. Poudel currently serves as the Board of Directors (BOD) member in the American Society of Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). He is also the current vice-chair of the ASNT Research Council. He has served in various leadership roles within ASNT.

Prior to joining TTCI, Dr. Poudel was a laboratory supervisor and full-time instructor at the department of mechanical and engineering processes (MEEP) at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC).

This presentation provides a brief overview of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) and its current structure. ASNT exists to create a safer world by advancing scientific, engineering, and technical knowledge in the field of nondestructive testing or evaluation (NDT/NDE). ASNT has also launched various initiatives such as ASNT Learn, ASNT RISE, Virtual section, and a career center in 2020. ASNT wants to collaborate more with external partners so we can service our members’ needs and expectations and grow our customer base. ASNT also understands the value of higher-ed collaborations in achieving our strategic goals for workforce development and technology transfer.

This presentation also introduces ASNT Research and Engineering councils and highlights the mission/vision of these councils. These councils exist to promote and support NDE research, development, and technology transfer through publications, programs, and activities that have measurable influence in the US and the international community. Finally, ASNT’s strategic vision on the emerging/advancing NDE technologies is also presented.

Dr. Lalita Udpa

Lalita Udpa received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University. After a stint of 11 years at Iowa State University, she is currently a University Distinguished Professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University.

Dr. Udpa works primarily in the broad areas of Nondestructive Evaluation, Signal Processing and Biomedical applications. Her research interests include various aspects of NDE such as development of computational models for NDE and its use in sensor design optimization, signal and image processing, multi-modal NDE data fusion, and inverse problem solutions. Dr. Udpa is on the Editorial Board of Research Techniques in NDE and serves as an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Maganetics. She has supervised around 35 PHD students and 50 Masters Theses Dr. Udpa is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the American Society of Nondestructive Testing and Indian Society of Nondestructive Testing.

Electromagnetic NDE (EMNDE) methods and in particular, eddy current NDT is one of the most commonly used methods to ensure fitness of purpose as well as to ensure safety of operation of critical components. Eddy current methods have evolved over the years to address the varying demands of industry. As manufacturing methods and materials evolve, NDE technologies have to keep pace with these advances, demanding innovations in sensor design, instrumentation and data analytics.

Rapid advances in computational resources have given us the ability to design and optimize novel sensors for novel applications. This talk will cover examples of contributions made in advancing the use of low frequency EMNDE sensors to inspection of nonferromagnetic and ferromagnetic materials as well as composite materials.

Matthew Cherry

Dr. Matthew Cherry is an associate materials research engineer with the Materials State Awareness Branch, Structural Materials Division, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Dr. Cherry has been an active researcher in nondestructive evaluation methodologies for damage and material property characterization for over 10 years. His research is specifically focused on data analysis for eddy current and ultrasonic characterization of microstructure. Dr. Cherry manages research projects in eddy current testing including applications in multilayer structures, anomalous microstructure detection and characterization, as well as model-based inversion of eddy current signals.

Eddy current has a long tradition of use in aerospace applications and is one of the most prevalent NDE methods in service. However, despite its history, quantitative characterization of damage and materials using eddy current has not been widely adopted in industry. This presentation will show recent work on maturing eddy current characterization technologies to directly address challenges in aerospace systems. This will include progress on modeling and simulation, as well as inversion algorithms, to account for variability in manufacturing both the probe and components under test. Several applications for quantitative characterization using eddy current including multilayer inspections and microstructure characterization will then be discussed. This will include a discussion of research paths that could help address the fundamental challenges associated with these inspections.

Daniel Perey

Daniel Perey is a Senior Researcher in the Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch (NESB) at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). He has over 30 years of experience as a technical lead and project manager for numerous NASA aeronautics, space, and technology development programs with specialization in the nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of aerospace composite structures. Mr. Perey has over 14 Patents and has authored or coauthored over 30 technical publications in the development and application of numerous NDE and measurement technology areas including optical and fiber optic sensors, ultrasonic, acoustic emission, eddy current, infrared, and micro-electromechanical (MEMS) sensor systems. In addition, Mr. Perey has served as a NASA liaison for industry, universities, and other government agencies in the area of NDE of composites. Recently he has served as a manager in the Advanced Composites Project of NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program (AAVP) which was a model for NASA’s implementation of a public-private partnership (PPP) for research and development in composite structure NDE and certification. This program has also served as a foundation for a NASA follow-on PPP activity, the Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project where Mr. Perey currently serves as technical lead for NDE.

Mr. Perey has a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

Aircraft and spacecraft systems require high performance, light-weight structural systems that can operate in harsh environments and extreme conditions. These demands result in the need for material systems that can be optimized for various applications and mission requirements. Composites have many advantages for these structures where numerous and competing design requirements cannot be satisfied by more traditional materials. NASA mission vehicles often require large, unitized, complex structures where performance and weight are competing parameters that often result in challenging inspection requirements with service lifetimes that can extend to many years without possibility for reinspection or service. Composites are often the material of choice for these systems. This presentation will cover a range of NASA’s past and current composite structure systems and their often-unique inspection challenges. We will also cover current and future composite NDE research focus areas.

Prof. Reza Zoughi

R. Zoughi is the Kirby Gray (Battelle) Chair in Engineering and a Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECpE) at Iowa State University (ISU). He is also the Director of Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE) at ISU. He served as the Schlumberger Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) from January 2001 to August 2019. Prior to joining Missouri S&T and since 1987 he was with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Colorado State University (CSU). Dr. Zoughi held the position of Business Challenge Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1995 to 1997 while at CSU. He is the author of a textbook entitled “Microwave Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation Principles” KLUWER Academic Publishers, 2000, and the co-author of a chapter on Microwave Techniques in the book entitled “Nondestructive Evaluation: Theory, Techniques, and Applications” Marcel and Dekker, Inc., 2002. He is co-author of 179⁺ refereed journal papers, 362⁺ conference proceedings and presentations and 120 technical reports. Throughout his career, he has received numerous teaching, research and professional awards. He has also served in many leadership capacities in various professional organizations. He has nineteen issued US patents to his credit (in addition to several issued abroad) in the field of microwave nondestructive testing and evaluation. He has delivered numerous Invited and Keynote presentations on the subject of microwave and millimeter wave nondestructive testing and imaging. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT).

Microwave and millimeter-wave signals span the frequency ranges of ~300 MHz-30 GHz and 30 GHz-300 GHz, corresponding to wavelength ranges of 1000-10 mm and 10-1 mm, respectively. Signals at these frequencies readily penetrate inside of dielectric materials and composites and interact with their inner structures. The intrinsic nature of the interaction of these signals with material media, the relatively small wavelengths and wide bandwidths associated with these signals enable inspection of a variety of materials with high degree of sensitivity. Furthermore, availability of robust and advanced electromagnetic models and modeling tools, and improved imaging techniques rendering real-time, high-resolution (3D) images of materials and structures are specific and attractive features that have brought tremendous visibility and viability to these techniques. In addition, the diversity of composite materials and structures, used in a wide range of industries including: space, aerospace, infrastructure, manufacturing, to name a few, has resulted in significant growth in their utility. Currently, these methods are capable of addressing critical NDE issues, some of which include: i) characterization of multi-phase materials and mixture compositions, ii) evaluation of surface-breaking crack particularly those under non-conductive coatings, iii) inspection of complex layered composite structures, iv) detection of corrosion and pitting under coatings, v) inspection of aircraft radome, and vi) inspection and imaging of thermal protective layers. Finally, advances in innovative hardware design, development of easy-to-use software packages, and availability of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and systems have resulted in inspection systems that are affordable, portable, field-deployable and easy-to-use. Consequently, microwave and millimeter wave NDE methods are no longer considered as “emerging technologies” since they have been undergoing significant maturation over the past 3+ decades. This presentation provides an overview of some of these techniques, along with illustration of several typical inspection examples.

Prof. Kenneth J. Loh

Dr. Ken Loh is a Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Structural Engineering at UC San Diego. He is the Director of the Active, Responsive, Multifunctional, and Ordered-materials Research (ARMOR) Lab and is the Associate Director of the UC San Diego, Jacobs School of Engineering, Center for Extreme Events Research (CEER). He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Materials Science & Engineering Program and the Center for Wearable Sensors. His research interests are in multifunctional and stimuli-responsive materials, tomographic imaging techniques, wearable sensors, active metamaterials, and soft material actuators. His group is particularly interested in research problems related to human performance assessment, stimuli-responsive materials, functional structural materials, and structural health monitoring. Dr. Loh received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2004. His graduate studies were at the University of Michigan, where he completed two M.S. degrees in Structural Engineering (2005) and Materials Science & Engineering (2008), as well as a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering in 2008. He started his Assistant Professor career in January 2009 in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Davis, before joining UC San Diego in January 2016.

Structural systems are susceptible to damage caused by deterioration, changing operating conditions, natural disasters, or unexpected events. Undetected damage can propagate and cause catastrophic failure. Thus, structural health monitoring (SHM) is crucial for identifying damage initiation, directing repair, and ensuring system safety/reliability. This presentation outlines a new paradigm shift in SHM, where sensors are designed from a materials perspective stemming from a “bottom-up” design methodology. Through manipulating materials at the molecular level and then scaling them up to tangible length scales, one can engineer novel multifunctional materials, which are defined to possess a diverse suite of engineering functionalities. By coupling these materials with tomographic methods, spatial structural sensing could be achieved. This seminar will highlight a few examples. First, carbon-nanomaterial-based thin films are coupled with electrical impedance tomography (EIT) to realize densely distributed 2D sensing. Damage, such as cracks, strain fields, and pH/corrosion, could be identified and localized. In addition, recent work with Lawrence Livermore National Lab also demonstrated that 3D EIT can be used to detect defects in conductive 3D-printed cellular lattice structures. Second, subsurface structural sensing could be achieved by embedding passive thin film sensors in structural components and then interrogating them using an electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) measurement strategy and algorithm. Cross-sectional images of structural components could realize defects (e.g., voids or cracks) in the component. In addition, noncontact and subsurface pH/corrosion and strain sensing was also validated.