Rate My Professor Bart Smolders

Bart Smolders is Full Professor and Chair of the Electromagnetics group in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He earned his MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from TU/e in 1989 and his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the same institution in 1994. His professional career encompasses significant roles in industry and academia. From 1989 to 1991, he served as an IC Designer at FEL-TNO in The Hague and as an Officer in the Royal Air Force of the Netherlands. Between 1994 and 1997, he worked as a Radar System Designer and Phased-array Principal Engineer at Thales Netherlands. From 1997 to 2000, he was Project Leader for the Square Kilometer Array prototype at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). Subsequently, from 2000 to 2010, he was responsible for innovation in the RF business line at NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips Semiconductors). Appointed as a professor at TU/e in the Electromagnetics Group in 2007, he later served as Director of Education in the Department of Electrical Engineering from 2010 to 2015 and as Dean from 2015. Currently, he leads the Future Chips Flagship of TU/e, chairs the scientific foundation of URSI Netherlands, and serves on the Supervisory Board of PhotonDelta. He is also co-founder of AntenneX, a startup providing over-the-air test facilities for 5G/6G antennas, and the National Growthfund FNS-6G program, where he is a core team member.

Smolders specializes in electromagnetics, with research interests in antenna systems and microwave engineering, particularly advanced integrated antenna systems such as phased-arrays and focal-plane arrays for future wireless communications including 6G and beyond. His team contributes to major European and national projects such as SILIKA, MYWAVE, Polaris, EAST, and FNS-6G. Key publications include "A Novel Dielectric Resonator Antenna Array With 2D Wide-Angle Beam-Scanning Capability for Millimeter-Wave Applications" (2026, IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation), "PCB-Based Hybrid Series/Corporate-Fed 4×4 D-Band Phased Array with Wide-Angle Scanning" (2026, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters), and "A Linear Active Rampart Antenna Array With Two-Dimensional Beam-Scanning Capability for FMCW Radar Applications" (2026, International Journal of Antennas and Propagation). His scholarship has amassed over 4,300 citations on Google Scholar. Smolders serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Antennas and Propagation and IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. He has received honors including the TU/e Teaching Award for best Bachelor lecturer in 2011, the OECC 2021 Best Student Paper Award, the IEEE AP-S/URSI 2022 Honorable Mention Award, the Gerard & Anton Award 2023, and was a finalist in the Early Career Paper Competition at IMS2023.