Head of the Department Ivan Ndip

Professor Ivan Ndip joined Fraunhofer IZM Berlin in March 2000.

He led the RF group from 2005 to 2015. During this decade, he and his team significantly expanded the RF focus at Fraunhofer IZM and established new R&D topics such as antenna development, RF front-end integration, signal integrity and high-speed system design for various applications, including radar sensing, RFID, optical and satellite communications.

Since 2014 he has been head of the RF & Smart Sensor Systems department at IZM. He introduced 5G mmWave and 6G THz research at IZM and has been leading 5G and 6G projects with national and international partners since 2018. Since 2019, he has also been head of the IZM branch lab for High-Frequency Sensors and High Speed Systems in Cottbus.

To fund his teams at IZM, Ivan Ndip has acquired tens of millions of euros over the past 18 years from companies in the US, Europe and Asia, as well as from public funding agencies in Europe.

He taught graduate courses on electromagnetics of microsystems, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in electronic systems and high-frequency measurement techniques at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin for 11 years (2008 to 2019). Since 2008, he has also been teaching Professional Development Courses (PDCs) to engineers and scientists worldwide.

Since February 2023, he has been a full professor and head of the Chair of Antennas and High-Frequency System Integration at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU).

Professor Ndip is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of integrated antennas, high-frequency/high-speed modules, signal/power integrity design and RF/mmWave packaging for a wide range of applications. He is an inventor and holds more than 30 US, European and German patents. Some of his patented Antenna-in-Package (AiP) and RF system integration solutions have been used in many research projects for the development of miniaturized hardware modules for 5G mmWave and 6G THz communication, as well as for proximity sensing and hardware security.

Ivan Ndip is the author and co-author of more than 230 publications in referred journals and conference proceedings. His research has been recognized with numerous Best Paper Awards at leading international conferences as well as with Best Journal Paper Award. He is also a recipient of the Tiburtius Prize (Preis der Berliner Hochschulen), awarded annually for outstanding Ph.D. dissertations in the state of Berlin. In 2012, he received the Fraunhofer IZM Research Award for his work on the development and successful application of novel methodologies, models and design measures (M3-approach) for optimization of high-frequency and high-speed systems. In 2016, he received the John A. Wagnon Technical Achievement Award from the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS) for his outstanding technical contributions to the microelectronics industry.

Professor Ndip is a Fellow and Life Member of IMAPS as well as a Senior Member of IEEE. He served on the Executive Board of IMAPS USA as Director from 2016 to 2020. He is a member of the technical program committee of many IEEE and IMAPS international conferences. He has been the Technical Co-Chair, Technical Chair and General Chair of several IMAPS International Symposiums on Microelectronics in USA, as well as the General Chair of IEEE Workshop on Signal and Power Integrity (SPI) in Berlin. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Microelectronics and Electronic Packaging, and serves as reviewer for many IEEE Journals and Nature Communications.

Ivan Ndip studied electrical engineering at TU Berlin. He received his Dipl.-Ing. (M.Sc.), and Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) with the highest distinction (summa cum laude), from TU Berlin in 2002 and 2006 respectively. In 2017, he received his second doctorate, Dr.-Ing. habil., also in electrical engineering from BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany.

R&D Focus

• Integrated antennas and antenna systems
• High-frequency packaging and system integration up to THz frequencies
• RF/mmWave design, signal and power integrity, intra-system EMC & EMI
• Application-specific radar and proximity sensors for medical & healthcare, industrial automation, safety & security, and smart farming
• Application-specific RF front-end modules of mobile communication systems (e.g. for 5G, 6G), satellite communication as well as joint communication & sensing
• Chiplets, high-speed interposers and boards for accelerator cards, high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications