About & CV
About me
I did my B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University. My doctoral work tackled a long-standing accuracy-versus-efficiency headache in broadband electromagnetic solvers — the multiple-precision MLFMA — and, pleasingly, picked up the 2021 IEEE Turkey Ph.D. Dissertation Award along the way.
But I didn't take the straight academic road. For more than 16 years I built things in industry: ultra-wideband phased-array antennas and electronic-warfare front-ends, semantic signal processing and post-5G research (recognized with a top individual research award), and most recently radar and communication systems as an electronics design manager. Many of those systems went all the way to TRL-9 — designed, fabricated, tested, and fielded.
That mix is the whole point. I've published in the field's top journals and conferences and shipped hardware that has to actually work, and I'm bringing both to Sabancı to build a group around intelligent EM environments — proving, I hope, that rigor and real-world delivery were never a trade-off.
Short bio
For talks, session chairs & event organizersMert Kalfa is an Assistant Professor in the Electronics Engineering program at Sabancı University (Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences). His work unifies computational electromagnetics, phased-array and antenna systems, and nonlinear signal processing into a single framework for intelligent electromagnetic environments — task-oriented reconfigurable surfaces and arrays grounded in full-wave physics. He earned his Ph.D. from Bilkent University (2020) and brings more than 16 years of industry R&D delivering radar, electronic-warfare, and communication systems to TRL-9.
Curriculum vitae
A summary below; the full PDF has publications, patents, projects etc. See Expertise for my fields and delivered systems.
Education
Ph.D., Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Multiple-precision MLFMA for broadband electromagnetic problems · CGPA 3.96
M.Sc., Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Slotted sectoral waveguide antenna arrays in cylindrically stratified media · CGPA 3.84
B.Sc., Electrical & Electronics Engineering
CGPA 3.91
Professional experience
Electronics Design Manager
Executive and technical leadership for radar, communications, EW, electro-optical, and acoustic systems; system architect on selected programs.
Post-Doctoral Researcher / Principal Research Engineer
Novel sensing and signal-processing architectures for massive machine-type communications; led an industry–university research collaboration.
Acting R&D Director, Engineering Manager
Established a post-5G research department and secured its national R&D license.
Lead Research Engineer
Novel radar/EW system architectures, compressive sensing, phased-array designs and diagnostics; managed a team of six.
Antenna Design Engineer
Ultra-wideband phased-array antennas and EW front-ends; phased-array measurement techniques.
Selected awards
- 2023 — Individual Gold Medal (top individual honor) — semantic signal processing, Huawei
- 2021 — IEEE Turkey Section Ph.D. Dissertation Award
- 2018 — SET Panel Excellence Award (SPEA), NATO RTG SET-236
- 2017 — Leopold B. Felsen Excellence in Electrodynamics Award
- 2018 — IEEE AP-S/URSI Honorable Mention + Travel Grant
- 2014 — Best Student Paper, URSI National Assembly