Wojciech K. Gwarek was born in Poland in 1947. He graduated in 1970 from the Faculty of Electronics, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland. In 1973-74 he spent an academic year at M.I.T. (Cambridge, MA) as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study. There he was also involved in the work of the Radio Astronomy Group of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. His contribution to the area of modeling of non-linear devices brought him M.Sc. degree from M.I.T. (EE’74). Having returned to Poland, he continued his work at the Warsaw University of Technology, whereat he received his Ph.D. (1977) and habilitation (1988). Since 2000 he holds the state title of professor.
During his academic activity in the Institute of Radioelectronics of the Warsaw University of Technology he was holding positions of Deputy Director (1984-1987) and Head of the Microwave and Radar Division of the Institute of Radioelectronics (2005-2016). His teaching activities included lectures on electromagnetic theory, microwave technology, and electromagnetic compatibility. His undergraduate text book on electromagnetics published (together with Prof. T.Morawski) in 1977 as “Teoria pola elektromagnetycznego” (Wydawnictwa Naukowo-Techniczne, Warszawa 1978,1985), later in 1990 retitled to “Pola i fale elektromagnetyczne”, has been – for the last forty years – the basic text book on this subject used in most departments of electronics and telecommunications in Poland. Prof. Gwarek promoted nine doctoral students.
Prof. Gwarek was also very active in the work on adjusting the teaching program of the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology to the challenges of the fast developing technology in that domain. He also worked in several committees at the level of Department and/or the University. For example, he served four terms as chair of the Award and Distinctions Committee of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology and three terms as member of Rector’s Award and Distinctions Committee. In 2017 he retired from the full-time position of a professor. That has only marginally reduced his activity in the Polish and international scientific communities.
In the years 1992-1993 he was also a member of the core team organizing the Franco-Polish School of Modern Information and Communication Technologies in Poznań (sponsored by France Telecom) and Head of the Department of Electronics and Physics.
Prof. Gwarek’s research interests have always been related to microwaves. First he concentrated on microwave measurements. At M.I.T (1973-1974) he was working in the Radio Astronomy group of prof. Staelin and proposed an original method for a combined nonlinear-linear analysis of microwave mixers. The method was later further developed by A. Kerr and used successfully in the projects on millimeter-wave low noise receivers run by National Radio Astronomy Observatory of Charlottesville, VA.
Since 1984 Professor Gwarek has been concentrating on computational electromagnetics and, in particular, on the theory of the finite differences time domain (FDTD) method. In the early nineties he was joined by Dr. M. Celuch and together they published several contributions on FDTD and TLM methods as well as on their formal equivalence. At the same time, a large part of his effort was devoted to practical implementation of those methods in software codes. In 1996, together with his three co-workers (M. Celuch, M.Sypniewski, A. Wieckowski) he founded a company named QWED, which has developed and commercialized several software packages for electromagnetic modeling. Brand names of QuickWave-3D and QW‑V2D have become known worldwide and brought a prestigious European IT Prize in 1998 to their developers. The software tools of QuickWave series have gained customers in more than 20 countries on 5 continents. In the years 1999-2008 they were also distributed by a British company Vector Fields under the name of Concerto. Following the acquisition of Vector Field by the defense giant Cobham they also used to be distributed under the name Cobham Concerto. The QuickWave / Concerto tools were (and are) used for many application. Two interesting ones will be mentioned here:
- Space research (including leading NASA related laboratories: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
- Microwave oven manufacturing (including global market players manufacturing millions of ovens).
QWED also provides consulting services to industry and Prof. Gwarek is a worldwide recognized expert on industrial design of microwave equipment involving electromagnetic modeling. He has been consulting industrial companies from USA, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Italy and Germany.
Professor Gwarek is author of more than 300 technical papers. The Google Scholar base inquired in May 2019 shows 204 publications, more than 1600 citations and the H-index equal 20.
Throughout his career he has been very active in the international scientific community. He was reviewer for many Worlds’ leading journals and member of the TPC of many leading conferences. In the years 2010 and 2012 he chaired the TPC of the International Microwave Conference MIKON. An example of his international activity are more than 30 lectures or seminars given in 15 countries in the years 1994-2007. Twelve of those lectures were delivered in 2003-2005 while Prof.Gwarek held the prestigious function of IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer. Moreover, he has delivered seven short courses for graduate students and industrial specialists in USA, Norway, Sweden, Mexico, Israel and Australia.
Prof. Gwarek has received many awards and distinctions. They include:
In Poland:
- Award by the Secretary of The Polish Academy of Sciences (1988)
- Award by the Minister of National Education (1995)
- Award of Prime Minister of Poland for Exceptional Achievement in Science and Technology (1998).
- Champion of Technology awarded by the Polish Technical Organization (2000)
- Multiple awards by the Rector of Warsaw University of Technology
- Golden Cross of Merit by the President of Poland (2001)
- Medal of Commission of National Education (2016)
Abroad:
- European Information Technology Award (1999)
- Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2001). That degree is awarded annually to not more than one over one thousand of active members.
- IEEE Microwave Pioneer Award. The Award is typically given annually to one of about 15000 members of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society and recognizes “a major, lasting contribution in the field of interest of MTT-S, published in an archival journal at least 20 years prior to the year of the award”.
Prof. Gwarek is curretly (since 2018) a member of panel PE7 (Systems and Communication Engineering) evaluating evaluating applications for Advanced Grants of the European Research Council. (PE7)