Gürel, Levent

2013 Distinguished Alumni Award

For contributions to parallel computing, fast solvers, and accurate solutions of the world’s largest real-life problems in computational electromagnetics.

Levent Gürel is the founder and director of the Computational Electromagnetics Research Center at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. His research areas include computational electromagnetics, parallel computing, and fast algorithms for scattering and radiation. Levent has received multidisciplinary acclaim for his leadership in solving the largest integral-equation problem in computational electromagnetics, breaking the world record by solving a 550 million by 550 million dense matrix equation.

After earning his MS and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Illinois, Levent was a researcher at IBM Research Division, Yorktown Heights, NY. In 1994 he became a professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University, where he founded the Computational Electromagnetics Research Center. He has taken two sabbatical leaves to visit Illinois, where he has had various teaching responsibilities.

Levent’s research and teaching pedigree is extensive. He has taught more than 70 courses and serves as associate editor for four prominent journals in the area of electromagnetics, including Progress in Electromagnetics Research. His many books, journal papers, and other publications have been widely cited. Levent is a fellow of IEEE, The Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society, and The Electromagnetics Academy, and he was named an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for 2011-2013.