Riccardo Colella is a Post-Doc Research Fellow at the Electromagnetic Group of the University of Salento (Lecce-Italy). He earned his Bachelor¡¯s Degree in Information Engineering from the University of Salento in 2008. In 2010, he obtained the Master¡¯s degree (with honor) in Telecommunications Engineering from the same University. He completed his Ph.D. pathway in Information Engineering (with academic honors) at the Innovation Engineering Department of the University of Salento in 2015. (PhD thesis: ¡°RFID Systems and Electromagnetic Emerging Technologies to Support the Internet of Things¡±).

From the academic point of view he is a Teaching Assistant for the course Microwaves, Master of Science in Telecommunications Engineering (sector ING-INF/02 - Electromagnetic Fields), at the University of Salento. He was supervisor of thesis in the branches of learning of both ¡°Electromagnetic Fields¡± and ¡°Antennas and Propagation¡±, Bachelor¡¯s Degree in Information Engineering, and ¡°Microwaves¡± Master¡¯s degree in Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Salento. His professional and academic background is in the field of RF engineering, electronic circuits design, and wireless communications, including antenna theory and design, RF front-end design, and mobile networks. The main research interests lie broadly in the area of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. In this context, he deals with the design and development of novel RFID devices with augmented capabilities to support the Internet of Things, the design of ultra-low-power hardware/software systems enabling the RFID-based passive sensing and computing, the development of RFID tags with enhanced electromagnetic performance working in electromagnetically harsh environments, the design of accurate RFID Reader localization systems based on Near-Filed antennas with uniform magnetic field, the definition of smart techniques for UHF RFID tag antenna prototyping and characterization, and the study of the Human-RFID antenna interaction problem with Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) methods. Other research topics are in the area of Communication and Computer Science with the design of novel switched beam antennas and novel algorithms for power-saving applications in Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN). He collaborates, among others, with the University of Granada (Spain) on current research topics like ¡°printed electronic¡± and ¡°flexible electronic¡± for RFID, and with the University of Vigo (Spain) on the study of the radio-propagation of RFID tag antennas working in electromagnetically harsh environments. He took part in National and International teams of Scientific Research Projects and Technology Transfer Projects. He was a collaborator on ¡°RFID from Farm to Fork,¡± a European Project, headed by the University of Wolverhampton (UK) and supported by partners of 5 different European States, which had the aim to showcase the RFID technology to SMEs in the food industry and to identify and trace food information along the supply chain. Moreover, he was involved in two projects promoted by important Italian State Agencies as the ¡°Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (IPZS)¡±, which is controlled by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the ¡°National Institute of Health¡° which is under the supervision of the Italian Ministry of Health. In the former case a novel kind of ¡°platform independent¡± augmented UHF RFID tags suitable to work on Italian license plates and capable to interact with the vehicle has been designed realized and validated. In the latter case the possibility of using specifically designed RFID antennas with uniform magnetic field for the behavior analysis of laboratory animals has been demonstrated. Riccardo Colella was also a guest of a scientific television program on the main Italian public broadcaster (RAI) in order to disclose and disseminate some important scientific results on RFID technology. During his scientific career Riccardo Colella has been a reviewer for National and International Scientific Journals and Conferences as: ¡°IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT)¡±, ¡°IEEE Sensors Journal¡±, Journal of Medical Systems ¨C Springer¡±, ¡°European Microwave Week Conference¡±, ¡°International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM)¡±, ¡°Journal of Communications Software and Systems (JCOMSS)¡±, Mediterranean Microwave Symposium 2015 (MMS). Moreover he was an assistant of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the IEEE European Microwave Week 2014 Conference (EuMW 2014), and currently he is a TPC member of the IEEE Mediterranean Microwave Symposium (MMS 2015), and a TPC member of the IEEE RFID-TA 2016 Conference. He is a member of important National and International institutions as ¡°IEEE¡± Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and ¡°SIEm¡± Italian Society of Electromagnetism. He has been awarded with the prize ¡°Best Italian Thesis on ICT¡± assigned by CNIT (National Inter-universitary Consortium on Telecommunications), and AICA (Italian Association for Informatics and Automated Computing) and he has been finalist in the ¡°Marconi Junior Prize¡±, in 2011. Moreover, he has been awarded with the prestigious IEEE MTT-S Central-Southern Italy Award, in 2013.

He has authored more than 50 publications on International Journals and Conferences, and two Chapter Books with international diffusion. He is a holder of a patent.