“The labor market needs electrical engineers at MSc and PhD level, so the main challenge our department faces is to ensure that this growth is well supervised.”

Bart Smolders is Full Professor and Chair of the Electromagnetics (EM) group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Next to this, he is leading the Future Chips Flagship of TU/e. His key areas of expertise include antenna systems and microwave engineering. In the EM research group Smolders’ main focus is advanced integrated antenna systems and related applications such as phased-arrays and focal-plane arrays for future wireless communications (6G and beyond). He is also co-founder of the National Growthfund FNS-6G program, where he member of the core team.

Bart's team is collaborating on a number of large European and national projects, including FNS-6G, Polaris, MyWAVE (Efficient Millimetre-Wave Communications for mobile users, see: www.mywave-project.eu), SILIKA (Silicon-based Ka-band massive MIMO antenna systems for new telecommunication services, see www.silika-project.eu), EAST (tunable antenna concepts for 5G mobile), Integrant (90 GHz wireless point-to-point systems), MUSIC (60 GHz single-chip MIMO radar) and SMART-One (millimeter-wave channel sounding).

He is also co-founder of AntenneX, a start-up company that provides over-the-air testfacilities for millimeter-wave software antennas for 5G/6G and radar sensing applications.

Bart Smolders received his MSc and PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from TU/e in 1989 and 1994, respectively. From 1989 to 1991, he worked as an IC Designer at FEL-TNO, The Hague. From 1994 to 1997, he was a Radar System Designer with Thales, the Netherlands. From 1997 to 2000, he was project leader of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) with the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (ASTRON). From 2000 to 2010, he has been with NXP (formerly Philips) Semiconductors, The Netherlands, responsible for the innovation in the RF business line. In 2007, he was appointed as professor at TU/e in the Electromagnetics Group with special interest in antenna systems and applications. In the period 2010-2015 he was the director of Education in the EE department and responsible for the BSc, MSc and PDEng programs. In 2015 he became dean of the EE department. Since 2023, he leads the Future Chips Flagship of TU/e, next to leading the Electromagnetics research group

Bart is currently member of the "instituutsraad" of the NWO institute ASTRON, member of the Supervisory Board of PhotonDelta, Chairman of the scientific foundation of URSI Netherlands (Stichting Wetenschappelijke Activiteiten van het
Nederlandse URSI Comité, SWAN), chair of the 6G Forum at EuMW2025, member of the scientific advisory board of the Business Cluster Semiconductors. Recently, he was chairman of the NERG (Nederlands Radio- en Elektronica Genootschap, 2012-2017), chair of IEEE-Benelux (2014-2016) and vice-chair of the EuCAP 2014 organizing committee.

He is also coordinator of two large European projects on 5G/6G (SILIKA and MYWAVE) and co-founder of the NGF FNS-6G program.