Edl Schamiloglu (born 1959) is an American physicist, electrical engineer, pulsed power expert, inventor, and distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. He has been known in public media for his expertise in the design and operation of directed-energy weapons. He is also known for his assessment on the possible origins of alleged health damages presumably caused on U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba in 2016 as part of the Havana syndrome incident. He is the associate dean for research and innovation at the UNM School of Engineering, where he has been a faculty since 1988, and where he is also special assistant to the provost for laboratory relations. He is also the founding director of the recently launched UNM Directed Energy Center. Schamiloglu is a book author and co-editor, and has received numerous awards for his academic achievements. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Physical Society.
Early life and education
Schamiloglu was born in The Bronx in 1959 to Tatar parents from Russia who wed in Istanbul in 1957, where their families had independently arrived as political refugees. His only brother, Uli Schamiloglu, is professor and chair of the department of Kazakh Language and Turkic Studies at Nazarbayev University in Nursultan, Kazakhstan.
Schamiloglu attended Bronx High School of Science. In 1979, he obtained a Bachelor of Science in applied physics and applied mathematics and a Master of Science degree in plasma physics from Columbia University. In 1988, he earned a PhD in engineering (with a minor in mathematics) from Cornell University.
Career
Schamiloglu has been a faculty member at University of New Mexico since 1988. At the UNM School of Engineering, he has successively been Regents’ Lecturer from 1996 to1999, ECE Gardner-Zemke Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (since 2000), and distinguished professor since 2014. Also at the University of New Mexico, he has been associate chair and director of the Graduate Program (2000–2001), director of the School of Engineering Research Center COSMIAC (2015-2017), associate dean for research and innovation (2017-2023), and special assistant to the provost for laboratory relations since 2018. He is also president of the UNM Summa Foundation.
At University of New Mexico, he established a program for research and education in plasma science involving pulsed power and intense beam-driven, high power microwave devices. He founded the Pulsed Power, Beams and Microwaves Laboratory (1989), where for many years his team have been pursuing research in areas such as modeling of electromagnetic systems, directed energy microwaves, and the effects of high power microwaves on systems.
Acting as a principal investigator, or leading multilateral alliances, Schamiloglu's laboratory has received research subsidies of millions of dollars often originating from the US Department of Defense, In 2020, he led a five-university inter-institutional team sponsored by the Air Force, which was selected for a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Award from the United States Department of Defense to explore the Fundamental Limits to High Power Electromagnetic Amplification.
As a principal co-investigator, Schamiloglu became a founding member of the NSF Directorate for Engineering's sponsored Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), together with Dorota Grejner-Brzezińska from The Ohio State University, Anthony Boccanfuso from the University Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), Barry W. Johnson from the University of Virginia, and Charles Johnson-Bey, of Booz Allen Hamilton.
Schamiloglu has taught electromagnetics, plasma physics, neurosystems engineering, and advanced mathematics. He has been an invited lecturer at institutions in the US, UK, India and China. He has supervised over eighty M.S. and Ph.D. dissertations in related fields. Also, his laboratory has hosted many international visiting scientists since 1991.
As a special assistant to the provost, Schamiloglu has been aiding in the development of working relations between the University of New Mexico and United States Department of Energy national laboratories.
He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2002, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020.
Works
Papers
Schamiloglu has published over 400 peer-reviewed academic articles. His work has been cited 8,100 times (Google scholar, Aug 29, 2021). Some of his most cited papers are: