postech-School of EECS Convergence

Jihwan Lee Receives the ISAP 2025 Best Paper Award
Jihwan Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at POSTECH (advisor: Prof. Wonbin Hong), received the Best Paper Award at the 2025 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP) held in Fukuoka, Japan. His paper, titled “Inverse-Designed Holographic Surfaces for Multi-Focus Spatial Beamforming with Flexible Focal Region and Polarization Control,” was selected as one of the top contributions of the conference.

ISAP is recognized as one of the world’s top three international conferences in antennas and propagation and is regarded as the leading academic venue in the Asia-Pacific region. This year, approximately 1,100 papers were submitted worldwide, and awards were presented across four divisions: Antenna, Propagation, Electromagnetic Wave Theory, and AP-Related Topics. Lee was selected as the award recipient in the Propagation category.

Notably, his achievement is distinguished by the fact that the award was granted not in the Student Paper Award category, but in the general Best Paper Award division, in which researchers from around the world compete. Such recognition for a student researcher is considered highly exceptional. With this result, Prof. Hong’s research group has now earned the Best Paper Award for the second consecutive year, reaffirming its strong research capability and continued global competitiveness.

The award-winning paper introduces the concept of a holographic time-reversal mirror, leveraging the time-reversal symmetry of electromagnetic waves to reconstruct electromagnetic fields at designated locations. The work demonstrates precise multi-focus beam concentration and interference suppression in the near-field region. Furthermore, the research elucidates the fundamental principles of near-field focusing and establishes a new theoretical framework for near-field beamforming, earning strong international recognition for its scientific excellence.