Last year, we had four new Fellows elected from the candidates that were evaluated by the EMC Society Fellow Evaluation Committee. Our four new Fellows are:

Dr. Gerard T. Capraro

Andrew L.S. Drozd

Dr. Valeri Ya Kontorovitch

Dr. Thomas Van Doren

Two of our new Fellows are featured in this Newsletter. In the next issue, we will profile the other two Fellows. Congratulations to all four gentlemen!

Andy Drozd was recently elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow "For the development of knowledge-based codes for modeling and simulation of complex systems for Electromagnetic Compatibility."

The EMC Society sponsored Andy's nomination based on his technical and professional achievements in the area of computational electromagnetics (CEM), and for his dedication and active involvement in the EMC Society. To say he is dedicated and active is an understatement. Actually, Andy is one of our most energetic Society members. His contributions to the Society have been on behalf of many Standards, Technical, Membership, and Communications Services activities. As Andy has said, "...one way of finding out where you are best suited and how you can be of the greatest benefit (to the Society) is to dive in head first and test the waters..." Andy's philosophy has always been "...take a chance, get to know your way around and find out what works best for you and those around you." This philosophy has endured in his career and the many facets of his professional work. He hopes to someday narrow his focus on areas where he can be of most benefit. In the parlance of the EMC Society, this means servicing the membership and promoting the growth of the Society in the best ways possible, particularly through education.

Many of you may best know Andy Drozd for his work on behalf of the Experiment Demonstrations for the annual EMC symposia since 1992 and more recently, for the EMC Computer Modeling and Simulation Demonstrations which he inaugurated at last year's Montreal EMC Symposium. Andy has successfully launched a highly popular and well-attended forum at the symposia, which emphasizes both the technical and educational aspects of EMC. His efforts have added a new dimension to our annual symposia as well as helped promote our Society's goals to further EMC education at many different levels.

Others know Andy from his work for over 25 years in developing new approaches to CEM modeling and simulation, and advancing the current state of EMC analysis and prediction tools. Andy is the President and Chief Scientist for ANDRO Computational Solutions, a small company he started in 1994 devoted to research and development in the area of CEM technologies, products and services. The company is located in Rome, New York. Most recently, Andy has been at the helm of research and development to apply AI/expert system based technologies and common database architectures to the task of EMC computer modeling and analysis. The methods he has developed are used to facilitate the integration and communications among different CEM tools for EMC problem solving applications. Instead of using a set of independent computer codes in an individual manner to perform an EMC analysis of a complex problem, he has developed and demonstrated techniques for interfacing codes through a common database structure and to translate results from one code to another in a relatively seamless way. As Andy puts it, "Easier said than done. In the process you need to carefully bridge the physics and properly condition the simulation data from one step to the next to assure validity." This reconciliation of different computational stages and simulation data is a challenging process and one that Andy will continue to fine tune in an attempt to establish a highly flexible, multi-fidelity EMC modeling and analysis toolkit.

Andy has found that AI/expert system technologies are also useful in developing computer utilities that mimic the way an experienced EMC engineer approaches a complex problem-solving task. There is much work ahead, but a great deal of interest as well. According to Andy, the area of CEM modeling and simulation is a good place to be if you are a recent engineering graduate. The CEM discipline will continue to grow by leaps and bounds with advancements in both software and computer technologies. Andy says that many more companies today are focusing on multi-disciplinary simulation-based engineering. This means that improvements in computer modeling and analysis technologies will be realized, which will rely more and more on the use of high performance computers and ways to intelligently interface with the computer tools. Andy likes the challenges that this technology area offers.

Andy earned a B.S. degree in Physics with a minor in Mathematics graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1977, and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering which he received in 1982, both from Syracuse University. He is also a NARTE certified EMC Engineer since the inception of the program.

Andy is currently serving the second of a three- year term on the EMCS Board of Directors. He is a member of the EMC Society Standards Development Committee leading a working group on the development of CEM modeling and simulation standards. He is also a member of the IEEE Standards Association. Andy is presently the Vice President of Member Services for the EMC Society and Vice Chair of the Education and Student Activities Committee. Andy is also the Society Webmaster. Additionally, Andy is a member of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) and is the Technical Features Article Editor for the ACES Newsletter.

In 1997, he received the IEEE Region 1 Award for Contributions to the 1997 IEEE Dual-Use Technologies and Applications Conference. He was the General Chair of the conference whose theme was on information age technologies, systems, and strategies. Andy was responsible for establishing information technology tracks including special sessions devoted to defining the role of electromagnetics and multi-discipline engineering in the evolving information age.

He chaired the IEEE Mohawk Valley EMC Chapter from 1998-2000 where his efforts were directed at raising the awareness and importance of EMC within local companies and organizations.

Andy lives in Rome, New York with his wife Barbara and their son Evan. Andy enjoys recreational travel, occasional hiking, wine tasting, and an eclectic range of musical styles. Especially, Andy enjoys being with his family and playing with his son during those rare quiet times.

Introducing Valeri Ya Kontorovitch

Valeri Ya Kontorovitch was elected to the grade of IEEE Fellow "For contributions to the theory of EMC of radio communication systems, analysis and mitigation of interferences, and non-Gaussian channel modeling and simulation."

Valeri was born in Sverdlovsk, Russia on July 29, 1941. He received the M.S.E.E. (1963), Ph.D. (1967) and Dr.Sc. (1986) degrees, all from the Bonch-Bruevich Institute of Communications, St. Petersburg, USSR.

From 1963 to 1993, he was a member of the technical staff at the State Radio Institute where he was engaged in EMC system analysis for radio communications. In 1968, he founded the Laboratory of Electromagnetic Compatibility at the St. Petersburg Institute of Communications, where he performed research on the EMC analysis of communications systems and simulation of interference of different physical natures for experimental testing of various communication systems. His main efforts were dedicated to theoretical prognosis of EMC parameters of communications systems (so-called multipoint interference approach) and new methods for communications channels and interference simulation based on a stochastic differential equations approach (SDE). He was a Department Head at the Bonch-Bruevich Institute of Communications when he left.

Since 1993, he has been a full professor at the Research and Advanced Studies Center of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV), Mexico. He has published about 200 scientific papers and conference proceedings, five books and he holds 17 patents. He is Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. His present interests are the development of new methods for interference parameters calculations for EMC analysis and communications channels modeling.

Valeri has made significant and original contributions in the area of "EMC of radio communication systems." During the 30 years that he worked for the Bonch-Bruevich Telecommunication Institute (later Telecommunication State University) USSR, Russia, Valeri founded the Branch Lab Ministry of Telecommunications (USSR) "Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) of Communication Systems" and became its Head and Scientific Leader for many years. This Lab was in charge of creating a new set of equipment (channel and interference simulators) devoted to EMC. The Lab also provided theoretical support to USSR EMC standards for several types of information-transmission systems. In Mexico, Valeri formed a group of researchers that actively developed topics dedicated to EMI problems in radio communications (using a probabilistic approach for interference calculation, outage probability evaluation, etc.).

All of these achievements were based on the scientific investigations using "Stochastic Differential Equations (SDE) Modeling" and "Multipoint Interference Analysis." His investigations in the field of' detection, filtering and estimation of signals in the presence of non-Gaussian noise provided a theoretical basis for interference mitigation techniques in HF communication channels. The results achieved by Valeri show the robustness of the proposed algorithms, which give several advantages for its practical implementation.

Valeri made pioneering investigations in the following areas:

• Optimal and robust detection, filtering and estimation of signals in the presence of Non-Gaussian noise
• Dynamic systems approach for solving EMI problems of complex communication systems
• EMC analysis based on multipoint interference calculations
• Stochastic differential equations approach for description, modeling, simulation and measurement of stochastic processes (mainly non-Gaussian) in communication systems (focused particularly on EMC and related topics)

The significance of his investigations is evident in considering that his papers dedicated to optimum detection problems were published several years before the classical works of David Middleton and A. U. Spaulding. All of the projects started as profound theoretical research on rather complex topics. Finally, the results were implemented in the form of practical interference mitigation equipment for HF communications, test equipment design, theoretical prediction of EMC parameters for future standardization, expert EMC system design for complex radio equipment, etc. Taking into account the fundamental character of the research initiated and developed by Valeri, together with the dates when they were achieved, it is obvious that he was a "true pioneer."

Although considered mainly as an engineer/scientist, Valeri possesses remarkable technical and educational leadership abilities. The creation and development of the EMI mitigation equipment was possible because of a combination of novel theoretical results, and the work of a strong and talented team of collaborators with outstanding technical leadership. Because of the skills of its leader, Valeri, the Telecommunications Ministry authorized the Lab to manufacture the set of equipment.

As an "Educator", Valeri had 12 Ph.D, and 47 M.Sc. students graduate and he supervised 2 Dr.Sc. (full Dr. degree) thesis. He founded an M.Sc. course, "EMC of Radio Electronic Systems," and published the first manual for the Leningrad Bonch-Bruevich Telecommunications Institute.

In Mexico, he developed, for the first time, several educational projects, for instance EMC between LEO, GEO and terrestrial systems, interference analysis for microwave radio links, etc. Currently, Valeri is active in forming groups of researchers in the EMC field and keeps close collaboration with them in Mexico as well as in other countries (Russia, Canada and Israel).

EMC