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Dr. Miguel A. G. Laso, IEEE Fellow, received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunications engineering from the Public University of Navarre (UPNA), Pamplona, Spain, in 1997 and 2002, respectively. From 1998 to 2001, he was a Doctoral Fellow Student with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at UPNA. He served as an Assistant Professor from 2001 to 2006 and has been an Associate Professor (Professor Titular) since 2006, consistently engaged in teaching and research duties related to optical communications and microwave engineering.
From 2002 to 2003, he also worked as a Research Fellow with the Payload Systems Division at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, European Space Agency (ESTEC-ESA), Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Dr. Laso is currently the Head of the Microwave Components Group (MCG) at UPNA and the Co-Founder of TAFCO Metawireless S.L., a spin-off company of UPNA. He has authored or coauthored numerous journal articles and contributed to major international conferences. Additionally, he has led projects with public and private funding within the MCG and UPNA, holding several international patents, some currently being exploited by the industry.
His current research interests include periodic structures, inverse scattering problems, synthesis techniques for filters and multiplexers in the microwave and millimeter-wave frequency ranges, and their applications in wireless and space communications.
Dr. Laso has received several awards, including one of the Spanish National Prizes to the Best Doctoral Dissertations in Telecommunications from the Spanish Telecommunications Engineers Association (COIT/AEIT) in 2002, the Premio Extraordinario de Doctorado from UPNA in 2003, and one of the 2005 Spanish National Prizes to the Best Projects in Innovation in Higher Education from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. He served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques from 2019 to 2022 and is currently the President of the URSI Spanish National Committee. Additionally, he has served several times as TPRC Member of the MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) and the European Microwave Conference (EuMC), and as reviewer for several other international conferences and journals. Dr. Laso was the Co-Chair of EuMC’18 (Madrid) and the Education Resources Development Subcommittee, and he is a member of the MTT-5 Filters Committee and the MTT-S Education Committee. He also serves as the Chair of the Working Group of Standards for Microwave Filter Definitions, IEEE Standards Committee.
Dr. Laso proposed an output filter for the satellite payload output multiplexer that eliminates the need for the typical bank of low-pass filters (one low-power low-pass filter after each bandpass channel filter). This output filter provides the highest power-handling capability reported in the literature. By using Dr. Laso’s high-power output filter, the satellite payload benefits from a significant reduction in hardware size, resulting in important weight, volume, and cost savings. Classical techniques do not allow the design of an output filter with good out-of-band rejection (>80dB) up to the third harmonic (40 GHz in Ku-band), withstanding the power of all the satellite channels combined, and complying with the European Cooperation for Space Standardization recommendation. TESAT Spacecom GmbH, the European space leader, utilizes Dr. Laso’s filters in its commercial missions and holds the current patent ownership.
On the other hand, Dr. Laso reported for the first time on a set of techniques to synthesize smooth-profiled microwave filters/passive components. These techniques involve Inverse Scattering (IS) methods based on the Coupled-Mode Theory (CMT). The devices exhibit a smooth contour that can be implemented in planar and non-planar technologies and are particularly suitable, for instance, in the next generation of additively manufactured space components and the New Space business.