John L. Volakis is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and former Dean of FIU’s College of Engineering and Computing (2017-2023). During his tenure as Dean, he led the college to a historic growth in student success, research and advancement/industry relationships. Four-year graduation rates improved three-fold to reach 60% in 2023, and research expenditures grew by nearly 150% percent. The college’s student population also grew from approximately 5,400 to 8,700, while U.S. News and World Report graduate program rankings improved by more than 40 points to reach #61 among public universities in 2023. Concurrently, eight of the College’s programs reached top 50 status.

He joined FIU in 2017 after spending two years at Boeing (1982-1984), 19 years at the University of Michigan (1984-2003) and 15 years at The Ohio State University (2003-2017). In Michigan, he was a professor of electrical engineering, and served as the Director of the Radiation Laboratory (1998-2000). In Ohio, he was a professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Roy and Lois Chope Chair. He also served as the Director of OSU’s ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL) for 14 years.

Dr. Volakis is an IEEE, ACES, AAAS, and NAI Fellow with more than 40 years of engineering research experience. He has published more than 450 journal papers, nearly 1,000 conference papers, 30 book chapters and 32 patents/disclosures. He co-authored nine books, including the highly referenced Antenna Engineering Handbook, referred as the “antenna bible”. In 2004, he was listed by ISI Web of Science as one of the top 250 most referenced authors, and his google h-index is 77 with more than 31,000 citations (as of August 2023). He has mentored nearly 110 Ph.D. students, Post-Docs, and has co-authored 43 papers with them that received “best student paper” awards.

Dr. Volakis’ research is in electromagnetics, antennas and phased array, RF transceivers, textile electronics, millimeter waves and terahertz, EMI/EMC, radar scattering, and computational methods. His research team has introduced and/or developed 1) hybrid finite methods for microwave engineering, now defacto methods in commercial RF design packages, 2) textile surfaces for wearable electronics and sensors, 3) extremely thin, flexible and wideband conformal antennas and arrays with >30:1 of contiguous bandwidth, 4) novel composite materials for antenna & sensor miniaturization, 5) battery-less and wireless medical implants for non-invasive brain signal collection, 6) diffraction coefficients for material coated edges, and 7) model-scaled radar scattering verification methods.

For more in depth overview of Dr. Volakis’ biography, please visit biography page.

Publications

He has published over 400 journal papers, nearly 800 conference papers, 8 books, and nearly 30 book chapters. In 2004, he was listed among the top 250 most referenced scientists in Computer Science and Engineering by ISI. For the complete listing of his publications, please click here or view his Google Scholar site here.

Select Awards and Professional Activities

Below is only a select list of Volakis’ awards and professional activities. For a list of all his awards, click here.