July 17, 2025 IEEE honors Nader Behdad with prestigious John Kraus Antenna Award Written By: Jason Daley Departments: Electrical & Computer Engineering Categories: Awards|Faculty Nader Behdad, the Harvey D. Spangler Professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, received the 2025 John Kraus Antenna Award at the 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas & Propagation and North American Radio Science Meeting held in Ottawa, Canada, July 13-18, 2025. Nader Behdad at the award ceremony The Kraus Award, one of the highest honors in the field, celebrates an individual or team that has made a significant advance in antenna technology. Behdad was cited for “pioneering contributions to electrically-small-antenna and reduced complexity phased-array technologies.” John Kraus, who passed in 2004, was an influential researcher in the fields of electromagnetics, antenna theory and radioastronomy. He developed several new types of antennas, helped build and operate the University of Michigan cyclotron particle accelerator, and designed the Big Ear radio telescope at the Ohio State University, where he led the Ohio Sky Survey which catalogued thousands of radio sources in outer space. He was also author of Antennas, a cornerstone textbook in the field commonly known as the “Antenna Bible.” Kamal Sarabandi (Nader Behdad’s PhD advisor at the University of Michigan), Elena Behdad, Nader Behdad, and Susan Hagness after the award ceremony Behdad’s research expertise is in the area of applied electromagnetics with particular focus on electrically small antennas, phased-array antennas, bio-electromagnetics, microwave ablation, microwave periodic structures, and high-power microwaves. He has 23 U.S. patents in these areas. He has served as a consultant on topics related to designing antennas and phased arrays to industry. He has also served as a consultant and an expert witness for different U.S. law firms on topics related to intellectual property disputes as well as cell phone record analysis and historical cell site analysis. Over the years, Behdad’s research has been sponsored by various U.S. Federal agencies including the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, National Science Foundation, and the Defense Health Agency among others. UW-Madison attendees and alums at the IEEE AP-S meeting, Gwynne Symons Buxton (left), Susan Hagness, Liam Connelly, Cody Baker, Kai Ren, and Nader Behdad. Behdad has graduated 29 PhD and 15 MS students so far and served as the research advisor of 33 other post-doctoral research fellows and visiting scholars. He received the Harvey D. Spangler Faculty Scholar Award, the H. I. Romnes Faculty Award, and the Vilas Associates Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also the recipient of the 2021 H. A. Wheeler Prize Paper Award, the 2014 R. W. P. King Prize Paper Award, and the 2012 Piergiorgio L. E. Uslenghi Letters Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. In 2011, he received a CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Young Investigator Award from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and a Young Investigator Award from the United States Office of Naval Research. Professor Behdad is serving as a member of the Fellow Election Committee of IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society and served as the 2020 chair of the paper awards committee of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He also served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (2011-2015) and as the co-chair of the technical program committee of the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting. Being chosen for the Kraus Award is a career highlight for Behdad, but the award has personal meaning as well. “John Kraus’s antenna book has been a favorite of mine since graduate school,” he says, “and it’s nice to receive an award named after him.”