Charles W. Bostian

Alumni Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 Email: bostian@vt.edu http://www.ecpe.vt.edu/faculty/bostian.html

Charles W. Bostian is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, where he has been a faculty member since 1969. Prior to joining the university, he served as a U.S. Army officer and worked briefly for Corning Glassworks. He holds B.S. (1963), M.S. (1964), and Ph.D. (1967) degrees from North Carolina State University. Since 1993, Bostian has served as the Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT). He is also an active member of Wireless@Virginia Tech.

In his career at Virginia Tech, Bostian has taught more than 4000 students, and his teaching has been recognized by a number of awards, including ten certificates of teaching excellence and the William E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a four-time winner of the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teaching Award and an elected member of the Virginia Tech Academy of Teaching Excellence. In 2008 he received the VT Outstanding Dissertation Advisor Award. Bostian is the co-author of two widely used textbooks, Solid State Radio Engineering and Satellite Communications, now in its second edition. His current teaching interests are in RF design and in undergraduate circuit analysis.

Bostian's primary research interests are in cognitive electronics and radio system design. Currently he directs National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects on cognitive radio. He has served on two international technology assessment panels sponsored by NSF and NASA, visiting many communications research centers in Europe and Japan. These panels produced two widely read reports that significantly influenced the direction of satellite communications research. One of these was republished in hard cover by Noyes as Satellite Communications Systems and Technology. He has authored or co-authored 45 journal and magazine articles and approximately 100 conference papers and presentations and contributed to the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Cognitive Radio Technology (Newnes, 2006).

Elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1992 for contributions to and leadership in the understanding of satellite path radio wave propagation, Bostian is a former chair of the IEEE-USA Engineering R&D Policy Committee and served as Associate Editor for Propagation of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. On leave during the 1989 calendar year, he was as an IEEE Congressional Fellow on the staff of U.S. Representative Don Ritter, working on legislative issues related to the American electronics industry and economic competitiveness. He served on the IEEE-USA Congressional Fellow Committee, helping to select and mentor other congressional fellows. He is a Fellow of the Radio Club of America.

In his off-duty hours, Bostian is a performing folk musician, playing hammered dulcimer and string bass with the band Simple Gifts of the Blue Ridge. They have released four CDs, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Australian Public Radio have featured their music.