Past Winner
2013 NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships

Christophe Caloz

Electrical Engineering

École polytechnique de Montréal

Christophe Caloz

With consumers looking for wireless communications that are fast, reliable and omnipresent, radio and communication engineers face ever-growing challenges in meeting demand. In short, the wireless spectrum is getting overcrowded, making bandwidth more expensive and slowing down data. There’s a demand for radio solutions that offer higher processing efficiency than the digital signal processing currently in use.

Christophe Caloz is a research leader in the field of electromagnetic engineering who is developing a new generation of artificial semiconductor substances that are engineered to perform functions not possible with naturally occurring materials. 

Dr. Caloz, a 2013 recipient of an NSERC Steacie Fellowship, is a pioneer in developing the next generation of this technology—multi-scale metamaterials. These structures offer multiple frequency bands, wide bands and high-volume radio data processing, among other features.

Dr. Caloz’s innovative research led to the creation of a spin-off company, ScisWave, which is developing commercial applications for one of his research breakthroughs—the world’s first leaky-wave antenna capable of efficiently scanning full spaces, for a wide range of applications outside the laboratory. It offers major advantages over conventional antennas with significant potential in wireless communication, radar, sensors and precision instrumentation.

His future research is aimed at tackling the challenges associated with wider adoption of analog signal processing in wireless radio. This form of wireless processing will occur in real time with no need for data buffering, making it faster. No logic circuits will mean it uses less power. And it will have simplified system architecture, reducing cost.