Spotlight on research excellence: EEE's PhD prizewinners

Worthy winners: (l-r) Matteo Nerini, Artem Voronov and Chenghong Bian

Three outstanding PhD students in Electrical & Electronic Engineering have been recognised with prizes for the exceptional quality of their research.

The Eryl Cadwallader Davies Prize for Outstanding Thesis is awarded to students who have submitted an exceptional doctoral thesis during the academic year. This year’s winners are Matteo Nerini and Artem Voronov, who will graduate today.

The Stylianos Kalaitzis PhD Award for Most Promising Doctoral Work recognises exceptional progress and promise at the Late Stage Review milestone, and is awarded to continuing student Chenghong Bian.

Our congratulations to Matteo, Artem and Chenghong on their achievements. We look forward to hearing more about where their research takes them next.

Read more about their prizewinning work:

Matteo Nerini

“In next-generation mobile networks (6G), it is expected that smart surfaces will be deployed throughout urban environments to control how wireless signals bounce around, helping them reach places where the signal is usually weak or blocked. They will make mobile connectivity even more reliable and faster, enabling applications and use cases unthinkable in 5G networks. My PhD thesis focused on the modeling and analysis of these surfaces, known as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs)."

What I hope for most is to inspire future generations of PhD students, just as that former postdoc once inspired me. Matteo Nerini

"I was significantly inspired by a seminal paper on the topic, authored by a former postdoc in our group, Dr Shanpu Shen. My supervisor and collaborators then played a pivotal role in shaping the ideas and transforming that seminal paper into a research topic today pursued by numerous research groups worldwide."

Matteo is now a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial, working towards his goal of an academic career. "What I hope for most is to inspire future generations of PhD students, just as that former postdoc once inspired me.”

Artem Voronov

"Near field communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless technology with prominent applications such as contactless payments, ticketing, biometric documents, and logistics.

My research discusses the ground-up development, fabrication, and experimental demonstration of novel NFC systems capable of locating tags in physical space. In contrast to conventional systems comprising a centralised set of readers, the proposed setups employ flexible antennas with distributed contactless nodes. The new systems are modular, less complex, can be scaled on-the-fly, and are equally suitable for deployment in small- or large-scale environments.

"Whatever challenges the future holds, the skills I acquired throughout my degrees at Imperial will be an indispensable part of my arsenal.” Artem Voronov

The bulk of my research and experimental work was conducted during the pandemic, in isolation, in a home laboratory. I am grateful for the unwavering support of my supervisors Professor Richard Syms and Dr Oleksiy Sydoruk, who showed me how much could be achieved with very little.

Whatever challenges the future holds, the skills I acquired throughout my degrees at Imperial will be an indispensable part of my arsenal.”

Chenghong Bian

Though only two-thirds through his PhD studies, Chenghong receives the Stylianos Kalaitzis Award for his promising research so far. This prize is awarded at the Late Review stage, for the expected original contributions, future plan quality, and the level of research engagement – measured by publications and external presentations.

“My PhD research develops advanced AI-powered techniques for more efficient and effective wireless content delivery in future 6G networks by combining fundamental aspects of signal processing and information theory.

Many thanks to my supervisor Professor Deniz Gunduz for consistently offering valuable research insights, encouraging me to investigate fundamental problems, and helping me broaden my research perspective.

I’m also deeply grateful to the postdocs and senior PhD students in our IPC lab for their guidance and support."