Rate My Professor Hiroki Wakatsuchi

Hiroki Wakatsuchi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at Nagoya Institute of Technology. He received his BEng and MEng degrees from Aoyama Gakuin University in 2006 and 2008, respectively, followed by a PhD in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK, in 2011. After completing his doctorate, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, from October 2011 to September 2013. In October 2013, he joined Nagoya Institute of Technology as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Center for Innovative Young Researchers, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Engineering in July 2016. Earlier in his career, he worked at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology from 2005 to 2008.

Wakatsuchi leads the Electromagnetics Research Group at Nagoya Institute of Technology, focusing on artificially engineered electromagnetic materials such as metamaterials and metasurfaces. His research explores waveform-selective surfaces that respond differently to electromagnetic pulses based on characteristics like pulse width, enabling applications in wireless communications, microwave power transfer, radar identification, and radio wave environment improvement for devices like smartphones. Key publications include "Pulse-driven self-reconfigurable meta-antennas" in Nature Communications (2023), "Anisotropic impedance surfaces activated by incident waveform" in Nanophotonics (2022), and "Waveform Selective Surfaces" in Advanced Functional Materials (2019). His scholarship has accumulated over 1,500 citations. Wakatsuchi has received fellowships from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, including Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO, 2019-2022) and Fusion Oriented REsearch for disruptive Science and Technology (FOREST, 2023-present). Notable awards include the Ando Hiroshige Memorial Academic Encouragement Award (2016), Telecom Dissemination Foundation Award (2015), Funai Research Encouragement Award (2014), and multiple Nagoya Institute of Technology commendations and faculty evaluation excellence awards (2016, 2020, 2023, 2024).