Biography

Francisco Medina Mena was born in Puerto Real, Cádiz (Spain), in November 1960. Puerto Real is a 40.000 thousands inhabitants town located at the Bay of Cádiz, housing an important shipyard and automotive and aeronautics industries. Beautiful pine forests of great ecological and aesthetical value at the sea level conform the landscape of the environment. After living his first few years at Córdoba (a beautiful town at the South of Spain, former capital of the Caliphate Omeya, the place of the famous Great Mosque of Córdoba), he came back to Puerto Real and followed most of his primary and the whole secondary school education in that town (Colegio Público La Jarcia and Colegio María Auxiliadora). After the High School period he moved to Seville to study Physics in the University of Seville. Seville is one of the most beautiful Spanish cities. The town is located at the banks of Guadalquivir river and has one of the largest historical centres in Europe. The minaret "La Giralda", the Gothic Cathedral (one of the largest in Christendom), and the "Alcázar Palace" are worldwide known monuments. Part of its treasure include "Casa de Pilatos", "Torre del Oro", the "Town Hall", "Archive of the Indies" (where thehistorical records of the American continent are kept), the "Fine Arts Museum" (the second largest painting museum in Spain, after "El Prado"), plus marvelous convents, parish churches, palaces and gardens.

Puerto Real (Cádiz)

Puerto Real from the sea.

He received the Licenciado (M.Sc., with honors) and Doctor (Ph.D.) degrees from the University of Seville (more than 500 years old Institution) in 1983 and 1987 respectively, both in Physics (Major: Electronics / Microwaves). He was awarded the "Premio Extraordinario de Licenciatura" and some other awards from local institutions and private companies related with the fact of being the "first in the class" ("Premio Real Maestranz a de Caballería", "Premio Compañía Sevillana de Electricidad", "Premio Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Sevilla" ). He also received the "Rogelio Segovia Torres Award" from the IEEE Spanish Section (1985) and the "Ciudad de Sevilla Best Ph.D. Thesis Award" from the Ayuntamiento de Sevilla (Seville, Spain).

He was the recipient of a Research Scholarship of the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) (Ministry of Science and Education, MEC) in 1983. From 1986 to 1987, he spent the academic year at the Laboratoire de Microondes de l'ENSEEIHT, INP , Toulouse (France) under the supervision of Prof. Henri Baudrand (IEEE Fellow), thanks to a scholarship of the Spanish MEC and the French Ministère de la Recherche et la Technologie (French Ministry of Research and Technology). During the period 1985-1989, he was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism, University of Seville, where, since 1990, he has been an Associate Professor of Electromagnetism. In July 2009 he was promoted to Full Professor. Along more than 25 years he has taught several courses on basic Electromagnetism, waveguides and antennas, microwave circuit theory and related topics both to undergraduate and graduate students. He has supervised 6 Ph.D. students. Currently (since 1998), he is the Head of the "Microwaves Group" , a research group involving more than 15 researchers working at the Applied Physics Departments I, II and III (University of Seville) and at the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism.

Medina at work

At work with HP8510B.

His research interest includes analytical and numerical methods for guiding, resonant and radiating structures, passive planar circuits (filters, couplers, baluns, ...), periodic structures, and the study of the influence of anisotropic materials (with emphasis on microwave ferrites) on such systems. He has been also involved in the study of artificial electromagnetic media (mainly metamaterials) modeling and design and, more recently, on extraordinary transmission phenomena. He has published a number of papers in technical and scientific journals and international and local conferences (see the section Publications of the Microwaves Group for a detailed list of papers and presentations) or the publications link in this web page. All this work has been carried out in the frame of more than 40 research projects and other type of grants (he has been the principal investigator of 23 of those projects and grants).

Medina at the swimmingpool

In the Spanish house of my British very good friends, Antony and Leon, with my daughter, Marta, and my son, Santos.

Francisco Medina has been a member of the Technical Programme Committees (TPC) of several international scope conferences (including EuMC, ISRAMT, MMS, MMET and PIERS) and has organized some workshops and small conferences. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering . He is also in the review board of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. He serves as reviewer for a number of other IEEE, Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), U.K., and American Physics Association journals (in total, he acts or has acted as reviewer for 34 different scientific and technical journals, including high impact journals such as Nature Materials or Advances Materials and highly respected journals in technical and scientific areas). He is a member of IEEE and of EuMA (European Microwave association). He has been the representative of Spain/Portugal/Andorra in EuMA during the period 2008-2011. He is a Fellow of the MIT Electromagnetics Academy (since 2004) and he is also a Fellow of IEEE (2010).

Of special emotional significance has been his election (18th June 2010) as ``Favourite Son'' (Hijo Predilecto) of his home town (Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain).

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Complete CV in Spanish: follow this link.