Introduction to the Training & Education section

We believe that the area of training and education is one of the most promising for the spreading excellence within and from the NoE.

Such activities may be performed on a national as well as on a European level. The advantage with doing this on a European level is two-fold. First, a larger community makes it possible to share a larger set of activities. For example a specialised antenna course may reach a larger group of potential students. Second, the interaction between trainers, students, and specialists in itself helps the integration.

Aims and Objectives
There are three types of training and education activities that we will operate in the NoE:

1. General organisation and support;
2. An European School of Antennas: short courses, summer schools, and coordination of undergraduate training (XUNTA);
3. A virtual antenna laboratory (VALab).

The first activity includes a database of available courses, travel grants to allow participation in these, and exchange of students with industry. A first step is to find and list the different courses available throughout Europe at graduate and Ph.D. level. Since most antenna groups have a number, often around ten, students, spent in organising a course with exercises, computer labs etc., is likely to benefit a large group of students. This is especially true when the education or training concerns experimental work, such as special antenna measurement techniques. A list of courses will be available on the Network VCE.

The travel grants are primarily aimed at Ph.D. students who will have the possibility to visit another university for a limited time in order of attend a specific course, but also to perform research and exchange ideas. The grants are also directed at students who wish to participate in short courses or summer schools (see below).

We also seek to increase the exchange of personnel between industry and universities. Primarily, we wish to consolidate and expand the notion of “Industrial” PhD’s in Europe. Such students may be fully or partially supported by the Industry hosting them.

We have several objectives in doing so:

First, to increase the ties in antenna R&D between universities and industries on a European rather than local scale.

Second, we wish to ensure that a much higher proportion of the Ph.D. topics are applied, strategic, and directly relevant for the future and competitiveness of the industry rather than purely academic or fashionable.

We can also reduce the duplications and increase the general usefulness in the university research topics.

Thirdly, we can provide high-level manpower at a lower cost to the industry research laboratories with the prospect of retaining their talent after graduation.

The second activity aims to create the European School of Antennas since, due to the geographic separation of the different industries and universities interested in antenna technology and research, it is of particular interest to have a well-organised set of short courses and summer schools. Another aspect of antenna education and training is the under-graduate courses.

Many Universities are changing their curriculum in view of delivering new Bachelor-Master degrees at the horizon 2006-2007, motivated by the wish to adapt to new European rules as codified by the Bologna declaration. This is therefore the right time span to try to structure and consolidate undergraduate teaching. Within the European School of Antennas we therefore have a work package on Excellence in Undergraduate Training on Antennas (XUNTA).

The third sub-activity, the Virtual Antenna Laboratory (VALab) is very related to the aforementioned VCE. In any antenna education it is of great value to use numerical simulation tools, since it both provides increased understanding of the physics behind an antenna problem and reduces the need for expensive and bulky antenna measurement equipment.

However, different antenna problems typically call for different software. A comprehensive antenna education therefore ideally includes different tools that today are developed with little coordination in several places. Since the different software is proprietary to the universities or industries that have developed them, sharing them directly is a problem. In the virtual laboratory this existing software is available for the researchers to use but not download. The virtual laboratory would also include multi-media educational material and examples of different antenna designs that may be designed and analysed using the software.