Jihwan Lee (Ph.D. candidate) from the Department of Electrical Engineering at POSTECH (Advisor: Prof. Wonbin Hong) received the Best Paper Award at the 2025 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP 2025) held in Fukuoka, Japan. The award-winning paper is titled “Inverse-Designed Holographic Surfaces for Multi-Focus Spatial Beamforming with Flexible Focal Region and Polarization Control.”

ISAP is one of the three major international conferences in antennas and electromagnetic propagation and is widely recognized as a leading conference in the Asia–Pacific region. This year, approximately 1,100 papers were submitted from around the world. Awards were presented across four categories: Antenna, Propagation, Electromagnetic Wave Theory, and AP-Related Topics, with Lee receiving the award in the Propagation category.

Notably, this recognition was awarded in the general Best Paper Award category, rather than the Student Paper Award, meaning Lee competed against researchers worldwide. It is therefore considered highly unusual for a student researcher to receive this distinction. In addition, Prof. Hong’s research group has now received the Best Paper Award for two consecutive years, further demonstrating the group’s strong research competitiveness and excellence on the international stage.

The awarded research introduced the concept of a holographic time-reversal mirror, which restores electromagnetic fields at specific spatial locations by exploiting the time-reversal symmetry of electromagnetic waves. This approach enables precise near-field focal beamforming with flexible focal control and interference suppression. The study also establishes a new theoretical framework for near-field beamforming by revealing the fundamental principles of near-field focusing, earning international recognition for its originality and scientific significance.