Tuesday, 05 May 2026 at Noon | 490 Cory Hall
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Assistant Professor Aditya Varma Muppala
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering | University of California, Berkeley
Host: Kadircan Godeneli, BSAC Seminar Committee
ABSTRACT
Imaging systems are ubiquitous in the world, from complex mammalian eyes to infrared sensors in snakes, from selfie cameras on smartphones to the VLBI telescope system that took an image of a black hole, from MRIs and X-rays to microscopes and telescopes, they allow for the exploration of the universe and the revelation of the invisible. The most fascinating systems among these are the ones that allow observers to see beyond the limits of the naked eye. An imaging radar is one such technology-familiar to travelers who have stood in an airport scanner with their arms raised. Unlike other imaging methods, radar can penetrate materials, operate at long ranges, and does not use hazardous ionizing radiation, making it ideal for applications such as concealed weapons detection, autonomous navigation, non-destructive testing, and remote sensing.
Despite their potential, existing imaging radar systems experience a cost-speed trade-off that has limited their development and widespread adoption. High-resolution imaging radars traditionally require large, densely sampled arrays, expensive RF hardware, or slow mechanical scanning. In this talk, Aditya Varma Muppala will introduce affine virtual arrays, a technique that enables a single radar element to generate 10,000 virtual elements in real-time, breaking the cost-speed trade-off. Based on this idea, he will demonstrate several imaging radar systems and experiments. Muppala will then show how this same idea of affine virtual arrays can be extended to perform fast spherical near-field measurements for phased array calibration. Lastly, he will introduce new ideas related to real-time virtual array generation for both imaging and antenna measurements.
BIO
Aditya Varma Muppala is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (2025), M.S. in Electrical Engineering (2020), and M.S. in Mathematics (2023) from the University of Michigan. His research lies at the intersection of applied electromagnetics and integrated circuits, with a focus on millimeter-wave imaging radars and antennas, high-frequency integrated circuits, radar signal processing, and microwave measurement techniques. Dr. Muppala is a recipient of the 2023–2024 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, the 2024 College of Engineering Towner Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor, and the 2024 Towner Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Research.
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