BERARDI SENSALE RODRIGUEZ portrait
  • Associate Professor, Elect & Computer Engineering

Education

  • PhD, Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, 2013

Research Summary

Terahertz technology, high frequency electronics, plasmonics, nanophotonics, electronic and photonic devices and materials.

Biography

Dr. Sensale-Rodriguez is a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Utah, with an appointment with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 2013 after earning his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame (UND).  During his research career, he and his graduate students have received multiple awards, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Award in Engineering at UND, the Best Student Paper Award at the 37th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz), the best paper in Imaging Systems and Applications at the 2019 OSA Imaging and Applied Optics Congress, the 2019 ECE department Outstanding Teaching award, the 2021 ECE department Outstanding Research award, and the 2020 NIST student award at the 62nd Electronic Materials Conference (EMC). Sensale-Rodriguez’s research and teaching interests are in the broad areas of (a) applied electromagnetics and (b) electronic & optoelectronic devices and materials. His principal goal is to develop new technologies for advanced communications, computing and sensing systems with particular emphasis in the terahertz to IR region of the spectrum. His research projects involve (i) simulation and design of electronic and photonic devices, in particular employing emerging materials; (ii) fabrication and characterization of electronic & optical materials, devices and components; and (iii) the system integration of these. This is multidisciplinary research at the intersection between electronics, photonics, optics, materials science, nanotechnology, and computing.

He is the author or co-author of 89 journal articles, 88 conference proceedings papers, 8 book chapters, 100+ conference presentations, and delivered 30+ invited talks and seminars. His h-index is 32 with 5,300+ citations according to Google Scholar. He has graduated 7 PhD students, and currently advises two PhD students, a postdoctoral researcher, two undergraduate researchers, and co-advises a research faculty. Among many service roles, including serving as the Director of Graduate Studies in ECE at the University of Utah, he serves as a member of the editorial board for Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) and Nano Communication Networks (Elsevier), and general chair of the 2026 IRMMW-THz conference to take place in Salt Lake City, UT. Furthermore, he has served as guest editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters and Microelectronics Journal. He served as the faculty advisor for the student chapters of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the SPIE. Since joining the University of Utah, he has been involved in research efforts supported by about $8.3M in external research funding, with Dr. Sensale-Rodriguez serving as the leading principal investigator on ~$3.5M. His research group is, or has been, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), DARPA, as well as industry.