Introducing Erping Li
With this Personality Profile, I leave Europe and would like to introduce a colleague from Asia. The person I would like to introduce is Erping Li. In the EMC Society, Erping is well known as the conference chair of the Asia-Pacific EMC Symposium (APEMC).
     Dr. Li’s connection with electromagnetic research goes back to his Master degree study in 1984 at Xi’an Jiaotong University, a prestigious university located in the western part of China. His supervisor, Professor Chen Degui, assigned him to a project of developing a 2D finite element method for analysis of electromagnetic fields and applications for the design and optimization of a current sensitive electromagnetic device. As you might know in those days, there was no sophisticated computational electromagnetic software. As a consequence, the students had to develop their own code to simulate the electromagnetic problems. Dr. Li completed his research successfully and obtained his Master degree in mid 1986 from Xi’an Jiaotong University. Thereafter, he continued his research for one and half years at the same location. In early 1989, he was selected by the university to pursue his Ph.D in Sheffield, UK. During his Ph.D research he focussed on the field of three-dimensional computational electromagnetics.
     In late 1992, Erping and his family moved from the UK to Singapore. There he started his professional career under the Singapore Government talent program. In the first four years, he was with the Singapore Institute of Standards and Industry Research as a senior research engineer. In 1997, he moved to a British Company located in Singapore as a principal engineer. He was in charge of the EMC control and design for various electrical and electronic systems; this is where he accumulated his extensive EMC experience. In 1999, the company requested he take a higher position in Hong Kong in order to manage the business there and in mainland China. He turned down this offer because he had to take care of his two little boys. Instead, he went back to his academic career and joined the Singapore National Research Institute as a division manager for EMC research. Dr. Li conducted various EMC related research; in particular, he addressed high speed electronics, signal integrity, and complex system EMC research. He is currently a principal scientist and department director. Under his leadership, the research department grew rapidly and the assigned research fields were extended beyond EMC fields, such as to electromagnetics in electronic packages and high density three-dimensional integrated circuits. In 2007, he was elected to the Fellow Grade as a research engineer/scientist “for contributions to electromagnetic modeling and simulation with applications in high speed electronics, EMC/EMI and signal integrity.”

Erping Li (left) and his Master Degree Supervisor, Professor Degui Chen, at the campus of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China in 1984.	Erping Li and his family, including Mrs. Li (left) and son Junze (center), at the Shanghai Expo in June 2010.
Erping Li (seated front row) visited Professor Robert Weigel’s (second from left) research lab at Erlangen, Germany in September 2010.	Erping Li (second from left) visited with Professor Wu Qun (far right), Chair of IEEE EMC Harbin Chapter, at the Harbin Institute of Technology, China, December 2009.

     In addition to his technical achievements, Dr. Li has made other contributions to his profession. He was co-founder of the IEEE EMC Singapore Chapter in 2001. He served as Chapter Vice-Chair from 2001 to 2004, Chapter Chair from 2005 to 2006 and executive committee member from 2007 until the present. Under his leadership, the Chapter received the Most Improved Chapter Award in 2005 and the Best Chapter Award at the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on EMC in Fort Lauderdale. He was the organizer and President of the 17th EMC Zurich Symposium in Singapore in 2006 and the first Asia-Pacific EMC Symposium in 2008. Dr. Li received the IEEE EMC Society Technical Achievement Award in 2006 and served the EMC Society as a Distinguished Lecturer from 2007–2008.                                                                                                                                    EMC