- Posted on 14 May 2025
Celebrating the women of GBDTC driving innovation in 6G antenna technologies on WTISD 2025.
Women researchers at the UTS Global Big Data Technologies Centre (GBDTC) are driving breakthroughs in 6G antenna technologies, dismantling STEM stereotypes, and earning international recognition through esteemed awards, competitive grants, and influential publications.
The World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) 2025, held on 17 May, marks 160 years since the founding of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nationals specialised agency responsible for facilitating connectivity in communication networks.
The theme of WTISD 2025 is “Gender Equality in Digital Transformation.” In recognition of this occasion, we would like to celebrate the success of the Global Big Data Technologies Centre's (GBDTC) talented women researchers in advancing 6G antenna technologies – breaking down the masculine stereotypes and associated gender biases within STEM fields in the education and research sector.
These women are creative, hardworking and productive, generating some of the most impactful award-winning papers in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. Their research covers a wide range of hot topics in 6G antennas including base station antennas, transmitarrays, advanced lens antennas and antennas for satellite communications.
Recognition of excellence
The research excellence of our accomplished women researchers has been widely recognised. For instance, Maria Pubill-Font won the student prize at the 2024 Australasian Symposium on Antennas, and Xingyu Cheng won the best paper award at the 2024 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP) in Korea.
Most remarkably, four of our exceptional women researchers, Dr. Haihan Sun, Dr. Lizhao Song, Dr. Maral Ansari, and Yi He, have each been awarded the prestigious Mojgan Daneshmand Travel Grant. The grant aims to elevate the visibility of women and is awarded at the flagship international conference IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI).
Dr Sun and Dr Song won two out of the six grants awarded globally in 2021 for their papers entitled “Dual-band base station antenna array with suppressed cross-band mutual scattering” and “E-band wide-angle multi-beam shaped transmitarray antenna,” respectively.
In the following year, Dr. Maral Ansari was awarded the grant for her innovative work on “A wide-angle scanning spherical Luneburg lens antenna employing metamaterial”. In 2025, Yi He continued this tradition of excellence, receiving the grant for her paper “A new aperture-sharing method for dual-band antenna arrays.”
Careers on the rise
Dr. Haihan Sun is now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, where her research focuses on intelligent microwave sensing and antenna systems for wireless communications.
Dr. Maral Ansari is now a Research Scientist in Space & Astronomy at CSIRO, where she works on antenna systems for radio astronomy, satellite communications, and space science.
Yi He is currently finalizing her PhD thesis at UTS, investigating advanced multi-band and ultrawideband antenna arrays for 6G.
Dr. Lizhao Song serves as a prestigious UTS Chancellor’s Research Fellow under the supervision of Distinguished Prof Jay Guo. Her research focuses on beamforming arrays, lenses, and metasurfaces for future 6G wireless networks. She is a rapidly emerging early-career research leader who has demonstrated remarkable capacity for impactful research in antennas. Her contributions to the field have been widely recognized through multiple awards, including five best paper awards at national and international conferences, as well as securing five globally competitive grants and fellowships.
In 2024, Dr. Song was further distinguished as an IEEE AP-S Young Professional Ambassador, representing Australia and actively mentoring young researchers globally. “Dr Song’s impressive technical depth and forward-thinking perspectives has earned her respect and recognition of her peers across the antenna community,” one world-leading professor remarked most recently.
Global recognition
UTS Global Big Data Technologies Centre’s (GBDTC) has been pioneering 6G antenna research with significant contributions from its exceptional women researchers.
The Centre’s success has just been recognised globally by the publication of Centre Director Distinguished Professor Jay Guo’s overview and vision paper on 6G antennas in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, "Antenna Technologies for 6G - Advances and Challenges". Co-authored by Prof Matti Latva-aho, the 6G Flagship Director at the University of Oulu, this invited paper was part of the prestigious IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society’s 75th anniversary celebration collection. Many of the research outputs cited in this work are the works of the women of GBDTC team.
Next year, we look forward to welcoming PhD student Andre Avila Saavedra from Chile to our team to continue this legacy of providing positive women role models in the field.
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