Rate My Professor Claudio Paoloni

Professor Claudio Paoloni holds the Cockcroft Chair and serves as Professor of Electronics in the School of Engineering at Lancaster University. From July 2015 to July 2022, he was Head of the Engineering Department and the inaugural Head of the School of Engineering. He leads the Electronic Engineering group within the department and founded the TWT Fab, Europe's unique distributed laboratory dedicated to fabricating sub-THz Traveling Wave Tubes. Paoloni's research centers on vacuum electron devices operating at millimetre wave and THz frequencies, encompassing applications in plasma diagnostics, healthcare, high-speed communications, and imaging. His expertise spans microfabrication processes, novel slow-wave structures for traveling wave tubes, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, millimetre wave high-capacity wireless networks for 5G backhaul and access, and advanced digital manufacturing. He has coordinated prominent Horizon 2020 projects, including TWEETHER ('Travelling wave tube based W-band wireless networks with high data rate distribution, spectrum and energy efficiency,' €3.3 million) and ULTRAWAVE ('Ultra capacity wireless layer beyond 100 GHz based on millimetre wave Traveling Wave Tubes,' €3 million), as well as contributing to the FP7 OPTHER project for a 1 THz Traveling Wave Tube amplifier.

Paoloni is an IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and an IEEE Senior Member. In 2025, he received the John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics. He previously chaired the IEEE Electron Devices Society Vacuum Electronics Technical Committee, served as a member at large on the IEEE Electron Device Society Board of Governors, and currently holds the position of Vice Chair for IEEE EDS Region 8. As Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, he led as Guest Editor for special issues on vacuum electronics and served as Lead Guest Editor for 'From Mega to Nano: Beyond One Century of Vacuum Electronics.' With over 260 publications in international journals and conference proceedings on high-frequency electronics, Paoloni holds three patents. A seminal work is 'Double-Corrugated Rectangular Waveguide Slow-Wave Structure for Terahertz Vacuum Devices' (IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 2010). His innovations, including the double corrugated waveguide—one of the most cost-effective solutions for TWTs and Backward Wave Oscillators up to 1 THz—have profoundly influenced vacuum electronics, enabling advancements in sub-THz technologies for next-generation wireless networks. He delivers invited talks on topics such as 'Renaissance of Travelling Wave Tube Technology for sub-THz Applications' and chairs conferences like the International Vacuum Electronics Conference.