Professor Niels Kuster received his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ).
He joined the academic staff of the Department of Electrical Engineering at ETHZ as an Assistant Professor in 1998 and was appointed Professor at the ETH Zurich Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering in 2001. Prof. Kuster is since 1999 the founding Director of the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT’IS), Switzerland and has also served as the President of IT’IS USA since its inception in 2010. During his career, he has held invited professorships at the Electromagnetics Laboratory of Motorola, Inc, Florida and at the Metropolitan University in Tokyo, Japan in 1998.
Prof. Kuster founded several spin-off companies with the objective to convert the most promising research results into high-quality commercial technologies, products, and services, creating jobs, and providing researchers with a platform for innovative and productive research to develop and commercially exploit their knowledge:
- Schmid & Partner Engineering AG in 1994
- MaxWave AG in 1998
- NFT Holding AG in 2002
- Zurich MedTech AG (ZMT) in 2006
In 2011, Prof. Kuster launched a new research initiative, IT’IS for Health, integrating his primary research interests in EM technologies, computational life sciences, and personalized medicine. More specifically, his research focuses on the development of 1) measurement technologies; 2) computational physics; 3) in silico tissue models; 4) physiological human models; 5) medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications; particularly novel cancer treatment modalities; 6) electrodynamics for the optimization of devices operating in highly complex environments; 7) safe and reliable wireless communication links within the body or between implanted devices and external equipment for biometric applications; and 8) exposure setups and quality control procedures for bioexperiments to evaluate interaction mechanisms, therapeutic effects, and potential health risks.
Niels has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications in books, journals, and proceedings on measurement techniques, computational life sciences, dosimetry, exposure assessments, and bioexperimentation. He is a member of several standardization bodies and serves as a consultant on the safety of mobile communications for government agencies around the globe. He is a Fellow of the IEEE Society, a delegate of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, a senior member of IEICE, and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility. He served as the president of the Biolectromagnetics Society from 2008 – 2009 and has been a member of various editorial boards. In 2012, he received the prestigious d'Arsonval Award, the highest scientific honor of the Bioelectromagnetics Society. He is currently president of the board of SPEAG, ZMT Zurich MedTech AG, NFT Technology Holding, Zeugi43 AG. In addition, he currently serves on the boards of several startup companies.
Prof. Kuster is a member of several standardization bodies and serves as a consultant on the safety of mobile communications for government agencies around the globe. During his career, he served on various editorial boards and received several scientific awards.
