Dr Ben Witvliet

Ben Witvliet is technical advisor at the Radiocommunications Agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands, and researcher at the Radio Systems group of the Faculty of EEMCS of the University of Twente.

In 2015 he received his PhD in this research group into disaster relief and humanitarian communications using ionospheric radio wave propagation, for which he received the Anton Veder Scientific Research Prize in 2016.

His interest in space weather and ionospheric radio wave propagation started as a licensed radio amateur, from which passion he made his profession. He has 25 years of working experience in broadcast transmitter, antenna engineering and spectrum management in The Netherlands and Madagascar.

He recently worked as Research Manager Radio Science at the Centre for Space, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (CSAOS) of the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. In that capacity, he supervised PhD students and organized the Bath Summer School of the TREASURE project, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) to produce the future generation of GNSS researchers. 

He is advisory board member of the TechTIDE H2020 project, established to realize a warning and identification service for Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TID).

He participates in capacity building activities in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC), e.g. as invited PhD supervisor for the University of Surabaya, Indonesia, invited speaker in the 2020 Eastern Africa Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Space Weather Capacity Building Workshop in Kilifi, Kenya and Technical Committee member and keynote speaker of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Broadband Communication, Wireless Sensors and Powering in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Ben Witvliet has experience in designing and realizing field experiments related to HF ionospheric propagation. His research interests are antennas, radio wave propagation, radio noise, and antenna and RF measurements. He was guest editor of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine special issue on HF Radio Systems and Techniques and is a regular reviewer for several journals.

Ben Witvliet contributes to WP3of the PITHIA-NRF project with an allocation of 30% of full-time employment.