In Scholars Share, Frelsi interviews academics and researchers in Electrical Engineering on various research-related topics and their personal motivations, experiences, and views on life at large.
This time, with Assistant Professor Yang Miao, at University of Twente, Netherlands. Her main areas of interest are Antennas and Propagation - measurement and theory, electromagnetics - spherical waves, high frequency approximation solutions to Maxwell's equations, signal processing for channel parameter estimation, and MIMO.
Interview transcript if you prefer to read:
Let me start quite broadly, can you share a bit about your early life?
I was born in China, in a medium city 3 hours away from Beijing and 5 hours away from Shanghai. And by an hour I mean at the speed of a bullet train - 300 kilometers per hour. Later, I moved to a coastal city called Hangzhou, which is one hour away from Shanghai. And I did my university bachelor's degree there. After that, I moved to Tokyo, Japan. I stayed there for five years.
The five years in Tokyo were fantastic. It motivated me to go and see even more of what the world can offer. During the time in Tokyo, I also visited Finland and Sweden for six months altogether as an exchange, which was one of the requirements of our Ph.D. program. We could have chosen between six months abroad in foreign universities or go to industry in Japan. I chose to go to Europe, and I found out the work and life atmosphere are quite different compared to that in Japan and China.
In east Asia it's more intense, more workaholic, staying as long as possible in the office. I found that in Finland and Sweden it is quite relaxed, and especially the time when I was there from around spring until summer. Everybody goes to their cabins in nature and life is quite different. After my graduation, I went to Belgium as a postdoc and worked for a few years there. Also, after that, I went back to China for one year. Then I started my career in the Netherlands in 2019.
It seems you are interested in exploring other cultures. But China is so rich as a culture and a country. There's so much to see and do. What made you want to go to Japan and Europe?
That's a good question. I have not thought about that for a long time. I had a friend who lived in Japan for a while. He was fond of Japan, and he mentioned the culture similarities. Looks similar, but very different in fact. I was intrigued and I thought, oh, why not? It's a good chance.
At that time, they had an introduction of Tokyo Tech in our University. I also got to know the people during that talk. And I also got the Japanese government's scholarship. Everything was ready, so I went. At that time, I also had a chance to study in Eindhoven, TU/E. But somehow, I chose Japan, maybe because it was closer to my parents.
When did you become interested in antennas, electromagnetism, and physics? Was it clear to you at that point that was what you wanted to pursue, or did you try different things first?
In Tokyo Tech I was studying at Takada laboratory which was mainly studying radio propagation. That was highly relevant to applied physics. And we also have an organization combining the antenna design laboratory, IC Design Labs, and all other factors together, called Mobile Communication Research Group (MCRG). It's composed of multiple laboratories working on different components of the radio system.
During that time, we had joint seminars and open house where we not only display posters of what we were doing, but there were also relevant industry companies attending. Gradually I understood electromagnetics is behind it all. I mean, it is the enabler of all the designs, systems for radar sensing and communications. Also, visualization of the electromagnetic fields is very beautiful. That's why after one year of the master program I started to think electromagnetics is beautiful.
My first project in Tokyo Tech was a measurement project conducted together with DOCOMO. They are one of the biggest cell network operators in Japan and at that time we were measuring a Uniform Circular Array at 11 GHz. That was 2010, or 2011. We could only measure part of the radiation pattern of the antennas because there were equipment limitations. We had to consider the measurement time, so we took very coarse measurement steps.
And later, I had to interpolate and extrapolate the radiation pattern to make it continuous and complete. That was the first project which also determined my interest, I guess. Because I dealt with these measurements and used electromagnetic theory to make the pattern more complete. I also had friends who started with optimization algorithms. So later, they got more into math models, and they were not that fond of EM. I think the first project might also determine people's interest.
Were there any events, mentors, or friends that significantly influenced your direction in life and work?
The program I enrolled in at Tokyo Tech was an integrated doctoral program, meaning we take master and doctoral programs together in one laboratory. But one year into the doctoral study I felt lost. I kind of lost interest in my topic. And there was not much research output. I was really confused at that time. My exchange stay to Finland was hosted by Katsu, who is Japanese.
I also knew Jan, a Finnish researcher who did an exchange to Tokyo Tech before I went to Finland. We did measurements together which were relevant to my Ph.D. project, but not 100% in alignment. I think during that process I figured out that the first year of my Ph.D. was not good. I realized their way of working is totally different to the way I worked in my first year of Ph.D. For example, they designed a measurement together and implemented it with different roles. Katsu - because he was a junior staff, he was always actively involved in this process and in the measurements.
But during my first year, I was totally on my own. After that experience, I became more active in reaching out to people with suggestions to work on something together. I do think that the exchange time changed me and made my Ph.D. trajectory smoother.
It sounds like your supervisor back in Japan was not too involved within your first year.
Because he was a famous professor, he was extremely busy. He also had a lot of administrative work. I understand him, but that's actually not so helpful for the new Ph.Ds, especially at that time. If I had a junior assistant professor as a daily supervisor, that might have made things easier.
What does it mean for you to be successful in life and work?
That's a good question. I think success in life and work is when I'm able to do the things I want to do without too many hurdles. For example, if I want to do an exchange in the United States, I'm able to do it. I have a dog, a house, a man, cat, all together. I'm happy with my current status. To me, success is to be content with what I have and being able to do what I want.
On the contrary, what do you consider the biggest lessons in your life?
There are a lot of learning moments. Now, I would say I changed too often, too many countries in earlier days, and lost quite some friends and contacts. Every time I move to a new place, I must start over. In the early days it was fun. But later, I realized that starting a new life also costs a lot.
It takes time and it can be lonely in the beginning. It can be difficult because people don't know you. They perhaps don't want to work with you in the beginning. On the contrary, I think living in different places also makes cross-border collaborations easier. You absorb different cultures. I think I'm quite open, so despite being the biggest lesson, it's also not regrettable.
Especially going from Asia all the way to Europe, that's not only geographically, but also culturally completely different. So absolutely you're open because otherwise you wouldn't be where you are. What do you enjoy doing outside work to unwind and recharge?
Travel and walk. I like traveling a lot. I like to eat different foods or cook different foods. I like art, to paint people's faces. Sometimes I give them a graduation gift with the painting of their face. I walk my dog. Walking outdoors with a dog is quite fun as well.
Painting is quite a creative activity. It's not necessarily the most common among researchers. I guess in that sense it's fun and very relaxing to do something completely unstructured.
I mainly paint people's faces so it's a bit easier because it's not so abstract. But it's also fun since you can paint it slightly differently compared to reality.
If you ask me, painting someone's face is a lot more difficult than doing something completely abstract. There you have absolutely no limit or anything to judge against. Are you spiritual in any way?
I am not.
What does the balance between work, family, friends, and hobbies mean to you?
At this moment, I don't have too much balance because I travel for work every month. We have a lot of proposal deadlines at certain times of the year. I must share the dog duties with my partner and sometimes, I think I did too little. Work-life balance would be that we have a fair duty at home.
At the same time, the work can be done without taking too much of the private time. At this moment it's mainly work. I work too much, so I'm still trying to do better.
What are the most important skills to succeed in research?
In an early stage, I would say if a professor had a lot of knowledge, it inspires the students. Nowadays, I'm discussing with my managers what takes you to the next step. My viewpoint has changed because the university requires either a lot of teaching time or funding.
The most important skill is to be able to acquire resources for the research that we want to do, be able to inspire, and get inspired by students that we interact with.
And how is it going for you in terms of funding acquisition?
It's not easy. There was a little success so far. We have a limited funding scheme, and the success rates are quite low. Sometimes people get funded all the time because they group up and apply each year with different coordinators, which makes life easier.
For famous professors, it is easier to attract funding without putting much effort into it. But for junior staff, we really must put effort into writing the proposal, which might be evaluated for 30 mins by random reviewers. To be honest it's a lottery. You need to keep on writing and there will be a time we get it.
In that sense, probably somewhat better than lottery because the success rate is a bit higher. What role does their creativity play in research?
I see a lot of incremental or industry-oriented projects when looking at those that get funded. I'm currently working on a joint communication and sensing project. Even though one of the most important criteria of funded research is creativity, almost all that get funding are industrially oriented.
So, I believe nowadays creativity might be about trying to co-create novel solutions with your partners, that not only satisfy scientific curiosity, but also provide impact to industry or society. It's not only curiosity driven, but also to bring impact previous projects couldn't.
I hear that especially in the Netherlands, the research is strongly applied. Really focused on applications, which makes it even more demanding in terms of the grant writing.
You're right. With NWO, the funding schemes always require industrial users, and we must have them join. To have them either contribute to the proposal in-kind or in cash. In cash it is difficult. In-kind is easier, but can be difficult too, because what one proposes may not be the current industry priority. It's not only for Dutch proposals though, but also for the EU funding scheme.
Except the ERC, which is clear like blue sky. For most others, like Marie Curie etc., it also depends on what kind of associate partners from industry we can bring in. Such as big players like Ericsson or Nokia, depending on research field relevance. Especially for us - we want to integrate sensing and communication. I'm not really an antenna designer now, so obviously, doing joint communication and sensing project - we do need industry to be on the same page.
So I get it that in your current projects, you do have cooperation with industry companies. Which ones?
In one of our current NWO funded projects, we do something called Open Competition. We collaborated with NXP, a semiconductor company in the Netherlands, and Bruco which is a startup of a slightly smaller scale. Also, TNO, which is a research institute doing all sorts of things.
In this project, we proposed to have three Ph.D. students. One of them is doing the receiver antenna co-design and we approached the NXP to see if they are interested in the future results because they have relevant products and they also want to step into joint communication sensing project.
They know some of our co-applicants in this project, so they are OK to provide in-kind contribution. Which is the support with manufacturing material or supporting and supervising a Ph.D. student.
Academia is a challenging environment. What are the biggest challenges for you?
That depends on the aspect, because we are required to be active in three. The first is education, which includes supervising master and bachelor students for thesis work; and giving lectures, that is also counted into education. Then research, which includes acquiring projects, supervise Ph.D.’s, and publishing.
Third is service - a kind of community work we do internally and externally. My current biggest challenge is how to balance those three aspects, because each of them requires a lot of energy and work. It's not just listing the tasks that I can do within one week. Normally, it takes months of work and preparation for a single task.
At the same time, the university requires you to do well at all the three aspects. So sometimes I'm wondering how to balance them and prioritize.
I get that you also teach courses? How many and what courses do you teach?
I re-designed a master course on radio propagation. I was also involved in the bachelor module, which is about electromagnetic waves. And in that module, we take a problem-based learning approach. Obviously, we don't preach, but we give problems to students they solve by themself with support from the TAs. Then we coach them to finalize their solutions, which is also an interesting approach.
Is that very different compared to, for example, China or Japan?
During my master study, we already experienced challenge-based learning. For example, during a master course, the teacher just gave us introductory scenarios, methodologies and so on. Then we needed to work with our group mates to find solutions and present them to relevant industry.
In that regard, I would say I was quite open to challenge-based learning. Problem based learning is like challenge based with the difference that solutions are fixed.
Do you have goals, that once you reach them, you will move on to something different in terms of work. Or is it more of a continual flow for you?
To be honest, I try hard to write projects, proposals. I was thinking, if I don't have any big funding getting in by 2025, I may turn myself into a lecturer. I do have very active reflections on what I'm doing, what I can achieve. If I'm not good at something, I might want to change my career. Sometimes I think that thriving in academia has a lot to do with requirements for funding.
You are already tenured. Which practically means that, unless something goes terribly wrong, you should be fine.
Yes, that’s true.
The academic journals are central to spreading the research results. The publishing system in place has not changed much over 300 plus years that it's been around. Besides the digitization and internet speeding everything up. Are there any changes that you would like to see in the current publishing system?
During my Ph.D. time, we tried to publish a lot with IEICE. It's not IEEE, but a Japanese version of IEEE. They are trying to challenge the dominance of IEEE. The problem is they are not recognizable outside Japan. And later after coming to Europe, I realized there is a lot more emphasis on open access.
Nowadays, in our university, we don’t accept only Transactions but also open access journals. You mentioned making the review comments public. I think that could be a great way to move forward. Because we have an experience when submitting to Transactions that people take a long time to reply and when they do, we get rejected based on strange questions and comments. Sometimes the questions come because they did not look carefully on what we did, keep asking - what if, what if.
And fairness in those review processes somehow needs to be changed. If you look at their whole ecosystem, the people who submit papers are researchers. The people who review voluntarily are also researchers. While publishers get all the benefits. That also somehow needs to be changed. I think open access is a good thing and not only making the article open, but also making the review process transparent and open would be good.
You mentioned that the Japanese equivalent of the IEEE is not recognized here. Do you mean that it doesn't count when you're applying for the funding, or how?
Their motivation is to compete with IEEE. But they are not so open to making their publication open access. For example, you must pay to IEICE to become a member to read the articles. And it's not so open to the outside world. I think at most Japanese universities, the professors are really in favor of IEICE system.
They also have local society meetings. They know what is happening and what articles are there. But outside Japan, people have little access to it which doesn't give them a strong position compared to IEEE. Now things are changing. This summer I was in Japan for two months and people talked about IEICE trying to make open access more common.
Sounds like the Japanese organization is kind of siloed in its own world. Would you say that there is a lot of research or papers, ideas, and knowledge that's kind of not accessible to the West?
You can also write in Japanese for IEICE.
So the people mostly write in Japanese or English?
I saw a lot of papers in Japanese as well, but I believe English dominates. There is a lot more English papers.
Have you noticed the cOAlition S and their Plan S? What are your thoughts on these and how do you envision the impact on the future of research?
I know that for example in the Netherlands there is an action called Everyone's Talents. If people like teaching, and I have colleagues who like teaching a lot, It's okay. You just focus on teaching. But then, if people like doing research and projects, like me - if I can focus purely on that, it should also be fine.
Despite I’ll end up working a bit less on the other aspects. Because everybody has different focus and interests, and they are good at different things. I would say, having criteria that is adaptive towards individuals would indeed be beneficial.
Yeah, I think that makes sense because even with the evolution of academia, say 200 years ago, one could have been a professor in multiple fields. Because the knowledge pool was not as big as it is today. There were much fewer people in academia - it was a lot less demanding to be excellent in teaching, research, funding etc. While today everything is becoming so granular and complex. It's getting harder, while the criteria are remaining high. But obviously it's changing. So that's a good thing.
If you look at some traditional universities, sometimes there are power pyramids with famous professors on the top and there's almost no junior, young, or foreign staff members. But the universities with great reputation have a lot of requirements based on the criteria like H-index and so on.
Those professors have a lot of resources. For example, they have a lot of Ph.D. students at the same time, and they also need to teach because they're famous and can attract students. This leads to some consequences, for example, to the ratio of support. The number of senior scientists compared to the Ph.D.s is very low and because of that you have less support. The time that the professors can dedicate to each Ph.D. supervision is also low.
That's why I think the Netherlands is very good at this because they're trying to attract more junior staff and make the power more distributed. Instead of having all famous senior professors, they also have junior and middle ones. This kind of balances the power dynamics and makes the ratio of supervision and the support to students more fair compared to some traditional universities.
Can you think of more effective ways to spread the research results? I'm trying to brainstorm here whether there could be better ways compared to journals and papers.
Data sets. Because in our field we have a lot of measurements. You can do a lot of measurements and some data gets processed, some not. At the same time, there are labs that do not have so much funding, or measurement data. If we can publish a dataset that can make them reusable by others, not only within the projects but also for externals, it would be great. I think good and well explained datasets should also be submittable to a journal.
Nowadays AI is quite relevant. For example, in our field, we can use AI to assist signal or data processing. There are a lot of problems with AI - what kind of training data we use and what is the AI architecture we use? Do we just use some existing architectures? I think those things should be open as well.
If a paper in communication fields needs AI assistance, we should make the training data and the AI architecture open, in Github or maybe some repository of the university. That would also be a good output. Other people could use it as well to validate their data on the same AI platform.
Definitely, AI is all the rage these days. Looking at applying AI to datasets from measurements sounds a bit like an overkill to me - the measurement data is typically such a narrow data set that looking for patterns you don't need any AI. Because you can use a correlation or other method if you know what you’re looking for.
I do agree with that to some extent. For smaller scale problems, I do think we should focus more on the model based on physics and math but in the communication world, there are also a lot of massive MIMO or distributed radio units. It's not only about dealing with single units of data signals, but many units.
In this case, if we still use a model driven, physics driven approach, it might quickly get too complicated for us to explain. I think we could use physics informed or physics-based AI. I do agree with you if it's a smaller scale problem, we should focus on explainable theories. But if it's going beyond a certain point, maybe AI is also interesting to explore.
Right, absolutely. Once the number of degrees of freedom goes beyond a certain amount, it's becoming like weather - hard to predict, draw conclusions, or see patterns.
Also, using AI does not mean we don't need to process the measurement data. We could extract some features from measurement data using model driven approach. But later, we could train the features to make it extend voids. I think indeed it's very important we do not only try to use AI, but also give justifications - how can we use models or physics to justify why we use AI.
Some accomplished researchers say that in today's productivity-oriented environment, they would not be able to make the discoveries they did. Do you perceive that in any way in your academic journey so far?
I do think, there is a lot of new work which is just a reinvention of the previous work. For example, a lot of our work in the radio frequency is reinvention of the works done previously in the optical domain. To some extent I do agree with that because nowadays the fundamental theory part is rather well elaborated.
Especially in the applied engineering domain. The fundamental theory part is already there. There were not so many new theories that we could explore and use those theories for new designs or system architectures. But it's still fundamentally based on a certain established structure. So, I somehow agree with that.
To finish, what would you advise to potential researchers, students back in China or Japan? What would be your advice to them if they were to aspire for a similar goal?
I think experiencing different working environments would be beneficial, being open to the world, and explore more. I mean, no matter if at that moment it's good or bad, it will always turn into a useful experience in life.
Photos are courtesy of Yang Miao ©
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