CEM brings together electromagnetics communities

This year’s Computational Electromagnetics conference in Aachen brought together the three main communities in the field and encourage them to look at a multidisciplinary approach.

The Sixth International Conference on Computational Electromagnetics (held in Aachen, Germany from 4-6 April), offered a full programme of speakers from Computational Magnetics, Antennas and Propagation, and Electromagnetic Compatibility.

This conference is the flagship event of the Professional Network Electromagnetics of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) of which Professor Jan Sykulski, Head of Electrical Power Engineering at the University of Southampton’s School of Computer Science (ECS), is the Chairman.

According to Professor Sykulski, who is also on the conference international steering committee (and was previously chair of CEM 2002 and CEM 2004), representatives from the three communities in electromagnetics rarely meet so this conference will provide them with an ideal opportunity to work together.

He commented: ‘The Computational Magnetics community, of which I am part, looks at the modelling and simulation of fields in all sorts of devices from nanotechnology to heavy power engineering, so it spans across the communities. The CEM conference is the only event which brings these communities together in a serious manner.’

CEM 2006 also looked at methods and techniques for predicting the behaviour of various electromagnetic devices so that their design and performance can be optimised.

Professor Sykulski added: ‘Most of these devices, from mobile telephones to big power generators, have many other aspects apart from their electromagnetic components. Therefore, one of our big challenges is to find ways to adopt a multiphysics approach, which would enable us to not just work across communities, but also across disciplines.’