New Faculty Spotlight: Asimina Kiourti

When it comes to the scope of electrical and computer engineering applications in science, the possibilities of research and career options are only limited by the imagination.

As a newly appointed Assistant Professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Enginering (ECE), Asimina Kiourti said focusing on her own interests helped guide her direction as a student.

Kiourti landed upon research in electromagnetics and circuits, specifically their applications in medicine and healthcare. As a teenager, this focus earned her accolades from the President of Greece in 2004 for ranking first among over 100,000 students taking the Pan-Hellenic University Entrance Examination.

She went on to receive her doctorate in ECE from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 2013. That same year, she came to Ohio State’s ElectroScience Lab as a post-doctoral researcher and later was promoted to senior research associate.

Kiourti said coming to Ohio State was an easy choice.

“(It) offers one of the top programs in the country on electromagnetics,” she said. “And, the ElectroScience Lab offers an unmatched set of facilities and expertise.”

The ElectroScience Lab, a part of the Ohio State College of Engineering, focuses on a range of applications in integral equations, finite methods and high frequency techniques.

Throughout this semester, Kiourti is teaching the ECE class, “Introductions to Electronics,” which focuses on the fundamentals of electronics and their application within various fields of science.

“ECE applications are everywhere in our daily life, from power to electronics to electromagnetics, to anything you can imagine,” she said. “The field is so broad that definitely everyone can find his or her own interest within it.”

Kiourti’s current research is focused on applying new electronic technologies toward saving lives.

“My research interest lies in wireless and very low-power implanted and wearable devices for unobtrusive monitoring of several bodily functions and vitals,” she said.

Among other work, Kiourti and her research group are looking into flexible textile-based electronics, antennas and RF circuits and how they apply to fields like healthcare, sports, space travel and even consumer electronics.

To implement her ideas, Kiourti is actively collaborating on projects with several Ohio State departments, such as sports medicine and neurological surgery.

“It is very exciting to see how many novel ideas can come up [in conversations] when engineers and medical people get together,” she said.

For more information on Kiourti and her work at Ohio State visit her research group page.

Story by: ECE Student PR Writer, Lydia Freudenberg