Interview with Dr Stavros Iezekiel

Featured Engineer

Dr Stavros Iezekiel

Dr Stavros Iezekiel - Head, Department of ECE, University of Cyprus

How did you get into electronics/engineering and when did you start?

I originally wanted to study physics at a university, but my high school physics teacher told me to do something more applied, and I felt electronic engineering was the closest engineering subject to physics. Also, some years before, an uncle bought me an electronics kit which I used to make simple radio circuits, and this got me interested in the subject.

I have to say that the breadth and quality of the teaching on my undergraduate course at the University of Leeds was exceptional, and I especially enjoyed the labs which varied from high-voltage through to semiconductor mobility measurements. Sadly nowadays the amount of laboratory work students are exposed to in most universities does not compare.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

In microwaves and photonics, many of the tools come in computer controlled boxes, and although instruments such as vector network analyzers and optical spectrum analyzers are impressive feats of engineering, they are still boxes (albeit very complicated ones!) My favorite hardware tools are probably optical benches and all the associated optics and mechanics, because you get a feeling for building something as opposed to pushing buttons.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I use AWR Microwave Office a lot (for teaching and research) and have also used Agilent ADS in the past. I have now started with VPI for photonics simulations. The problem with software is garbage in, garbage out. I find it worrying that many students believe in computers as if they are some god. There used to be a teaching lab in servo controls when I was an academic at Leeds, which also included a corresponding simulation in MATLAB. When the measured and simulated results did not agree, students insisted that the hardware must be faulty….and not that the model was incomplete.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

Getting active microwave circuits to work right the first time can be difficult, but measuring them properly is also vital. I remember many years ago trying to measure a small-signal amplifier, and the result from the vector network analyzer gave me a gain response many dB down on what I expected. It was only after many hours that I pressed the power level button to find that my measurement was far from small-signal, and that the amplifier was being driven into compression by several dBm of input power.

What is on your bookshelf?

Most of my technical books are in photonics; the text by Hecht (Optics) is an example of a book written by someone who knows how to explain the subject in great depth. “Why Size Matters” by Bonner is probably the most interesting of the popular science books in my collection, while “Logicomix” is a very entertaining graphic novel on the subject of Bertrand Russell and logic.

What has been your favorite project?

I would say that I have found all of the projects that my Ph.D. students worked on to be very interesting, and it is always rewarding to see young people mature into experienced researchers and to go on to start successful careers in engineering.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences? (blowing up things, getting shocked, etc.)

On a mundane level, I once dropped a tiny prism (used for coupling to waveguide) down the hole of an optical bench, never to be seen again. That was an expensive mistake (about $700). Needless to say I try to take greater care with equipment nowadays…

What are you currently working on?

At the moment I am involved with the setting up of a combined passive optical network – radio-over-fiber system (operating at 60 GHz), with plans to extend operation to W-band. I am also working on the development of optical ring-resonator filters, and their characterization with optical vector network analyzers using single-sideband modulation.

What direction do you see your business heading in the next few years?

My business is academia. I am worried that in many countries academia has lost its soul due to the need to market its “products” to its “customers” and the need to make sure courses and research are economically viable. This is all very short sighted, and I think this situation is likely to get worse.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

In education, I see the biggest challenge (in Europe at least) as being the recruitment of students that are interested in engineering and also have the analytical ability to cope with the subject. In my own research area of microwave photonics, I think the biggest challenge is seeing the field move out of niche applications. This will rely on advances in packaging and integration I think.

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