Ji-hwan Lee, an integrated MS/PhD student in POSTECH Electrical Engineering (advisor: Professor Wonbin Hong), received a TICRA Travel Grant at the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and ITNC-USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (IEEE AP-S/URSI).

The TICRA Foundation promotes education and research in electromagnetic science worldwide. It selects only eight recipients globally for USD 1,000 travel grants. Researchers from all regions and career stages may apply, making the award particularly difficult for graduate students to win.

Lee is researching “Holographic Surfaces with a Closed-Form Solution for Precise Near-Field Wireless Communication.” This is the first approach to correct focal errors in the Fresnel region of large-aperture antennas using a single closed-form analytical expression. Without iterative optimization, it enables real-time multifocal beam focusing and quantitative prediction of beam characteristics, outperforming existing optimization methods.

For its excellence and innovation, the work was selected for oral presentation at IEEE AP-S/URSI 2025. Lee also received a TICRA Travel Grant, enabling him to share the research at the international antenna conference.