Queen's University Belfast's Professor Okan Yurduseven has been named the 2026 winner of EurAAP's Leopold B Felsen Award for Excellence in Electrodynamics, the first time the honour has gone to a researcher from the UK.

Okan Yurduseven, Professor of Applied Electrodynamics at the Centre for Wireless Innovation (CWI), received the accolade at the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) in Dublin this week. The EurAAP award recognises the leading researcher under the age of 40 worldwide for fundamental contributions to electromagnetics.

Professor Simon Cotton, Director of Research at CWI, said of the achievement: "Prof Yurduseven is an exceptionally brilliant researcher whose work continues to push the boundaries of applied electromagnetics.

"The Leopold B Felsen Award is a benchmark of true excellence and foundational impact. To see Okan's pioneering contributions recognised at this international level is thoroughly deserved and reflects the world-leading calibre of research being undertaken here at CWI.

"His work is helping to drive our discipline forward, and he remains a profound inspiration to our entire team and the next generation of engineers." Prof Yurduseven's work spans antennas and propagation, microwave and millimetre-wave imaging, metasurfaces and reconfigurable apertures, and applied electromagnetics.

These advances underpin applications across electrical engineering, optics, acoustics and geophysics. He previously held research roles at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and at Duke University in the United States, and has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed publications.

Prof Yurduseven said of his award: "I am deeply honoured to receive this award from EurAAP. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my team, colleagues, and collaborators for their continued support and for the collective achievements that made this recognition possible.

"This award holds particular significance for me, as the work of Prof Leopold Felsen has had a profound influence on my research in applied electromagnetics.

"In a specialist field where reputation is built on originality, depth, and impact, the Felsen Award carries substantial weight. Winning it places my team among a select group of researchers whose work is helping to drive the discipline forward and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers."

Prof Leopold Felsen (1924–2005) was a globally recognised authority on wave electrodynamics. The EurAAP Felsen Award was established to honour his legacy and to promote excellence by recognising outstanding fundamental research in the electromagnetics community.