Title: Bridge-to-Faculty Postdoctoral Research Associate
About: Dieff Vital (Member, IEEE) was born in Torbeck, Haiti. He received the B.Sc. degree (summa cum laude) in mechanical and industrial engineering from the Florida Polytechnic University (Florida Poly), Lakeland, FL, USA, in 2017 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering at Florida International University (FIU), Miami, FL, USA, in 2021. His research detailed the optimal embroidery process and development of high-performance RF structures implemented on clothing items and RFID-type microwave sensors for chronic wound monitoring. He has authored/co-authored over 30 journal and conference papers extending from textile-based wireless power transfer and harvesting systems to smart solutions for continuous health monitoring. He is a co-inventor of 4 awarded/pending patents. Since 2021, he has been a Bridge-to-the-Faculty fellow at the University of Illinois-Chicago where he is exploring the microwave sensing of the gut microbiome, smart fabric-based modulation for electrochemical sensing, electromagnetics-on-textiles, and smart sensing for skin care. Dr. Vital received the Florida Academy of Sciences Al Hall Memorial Award for Best Poster and Excellent Academic Achievement. He was a recipient of the McKnight Dissertation Fellowship, the FIU Fall 2018 Student Conference Award, the International Microwave Symposium (IMS2019)/RFIC2019 Ph.D. Student Sponsorship (travel award), the 2019 U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Radio Science (USNC-URSI) Travel Fellowship, the National Science Foundation (NSF) student travel to attend the smart health workshop, the NSF IEEE RFIC’20 Student Conference Registration Award, and the McKnight Fellowship Travel Grant. He has also received the Third Place from the IMS2019 Student Design Competition, honorable mentions in IMS2019 and IMS2020 3MT Competitions, and Second Place for Best Paper Competition from the IEEE RFID-TA 2022. He was the technical program co-chair of various conferences including IEEE IMS 2022 and IEEE APS/URSI 2022.