Distinguished ProfessorKaru Esselle

Karunanayake Esselle, also known as Karu P. Esselle, is Distinguished Professor in Electromagnetic & Antenna Engineering at UTS and a world leader in Telecommunications, Defence and Space technologies. In 2024 he was awarded the state’s highest honour in innovation leadership, the PREMIER’s PRIZE for Leadership in Innovation in New South Wales, by The Honourable Anoulack Chanthivong, NSW Minister for Innovation, Science and Technology at the Government House in the presence of Her Excellency The Honourable Margaret Beazley, Governor of New South Wales. He is the leader of the MetaSteerers Team, which won Australia's national 2023 Department of Defence EUREKA PRIZE for Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia. More recently in 2025, he was the leader of the team that won the Academic Research Team of the Year at 2025 Australian SPACE Awards. In fact, in the last few years, Karu's achivements and excellence have been recognised by a large number of prizes, awards and acolades (21 in approx. 5 years).  He was named Australia's national PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER OF THE YEAR for 2022, leading to unique recognition in both engineering and science by becoming the only person to receive both a Eureka prize and Professional Engineer of the Year national title. In 2022 he was also awarded the most prestigious space award in Australia, the EXCELLENCE AWARD at the 2022 Australian Space Awards, in addition to 2022 Academic of the Year Award. Karu was also the Engineers Australia 2022 Sydney Professional Engineer of the Year and received Bradfield Award as well at 2022 Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Awards. In early 2023 he was awarded the UTS CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL for Research Excellence for 2022, and in late 2023 he received the Researcher of the Year Award for 2023 from UTS FEIT. IESL New South Wales awarded him the Professional Achievement Award at its 2024 Engineering Excelence Awards. In 2021 Karu received the Academic of the Year Award at the Australian DEFENCE Industry Awards and also the most prestigious Defence Connect EXELLENCE Award on the same stage. He is the only person to receive the "best of the winners" Excellence Awards in both Australian Space Awards and Australian Defence Industry Awards, and the only academic to win the Academic of the Year awards on both stages.

Karu is among the top 0.3% researchers in the world in the research field of Networking and Telecommunications, according to the latest data published by Elsevier in 2025, which analysed research impact of 217,000 researchers who are actively publishing in this field. He received the 2019 Motohisa Kanda Award (from IEEE USA) for the MOST CITED PAPER in IEEE Transactions on EMC in the past five years. His 2024 Premier’s Prize is the only Premier’s Prize for innovation leadership for all areas of Science & Engineering, including Medicine, Biological Sciences, Applied Sciences, IT and other technologies, Mathematics and Statistics.

Karu was the Runner-up to Australia's national EUREKA Prize for Outstanding Mentor of Young Researchers in 2020 and a Finalist for the same prize in 2021. (Eureka prizes are considered "Oscars" of Australian Science.) 2019 Special Report on Research published by The Australian national newspaper selected Karu as the Research Field Leader in Australia in two fields: Electromagnetism and Microelectronics. Karu is a FELLOW of three societies: the Royal Society of New South Wales, IEEE and Engineers Australia. He also received the Outstanding Volunteer Award from IEEE Asia Pacific in 2021 and the same from IEEE New South Wales in 2020. His team was a Finalist for the Academic Research Team of the Year Award at 2024 Australian Space Awards.

Previously he was the Director of WiMed Research Centre and Associate Dean – Higher Degree Research (HDR) of the Division of Information and Communication Sciences and directed the Centre for Collaboration in Electromagnetic and Antenna Engineering at Macquarie University. He has also served as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and the Division Executive and as the Head of the Department several times.

Karu has authored over 750 research publications and his papers have been cited over 16,000 times. His Google Scholar h-index is 62 and i10 is 257. In 2022 alone, his publications received nearly 1600 citations. 

Since 2002, his research team has been involved with research grants, contracts and PhD scholarships worth over 35 million dollars, including 15 Australian Research Council grants, without counting the 245 million-dollar SmartSat Corporative Research Centre, which started in 2019. His research has been supported by many national and international organisations including Australian Research Council, Intel, US Air Force, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Australian Department of Defence, Australian Department of industry, New South Wales government (Chief Scientist and Engineer Office), and German and Indian governments.

Karu’s other accolades include 2019 Macquarie University Research Excellence Award for Innovative Technologies, 2019 ARC Discovery International Award, 2017 Excellence in Research Award from the Faculty of Science and Engineering, 2017 Engineering Excellence Award for Best Innovation, 2017 Highly Commended Research Excellence Award from Macquarie University, 2017 Certificate of Recognition from IEEE Region 10, 2016 and 2012 Engineering Excellence Awards for Best Published Paper from IESL NSW Chapter, 2011 Outstanding Branch Counsellor Award from IEEE headquarters (USA), 2009 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision and 2004 Innovation Award for best invention disclosure. His mentees have been awarded many fellowships, awards and prizes for their research achievements. 58 international experts who examined the theses of his recent PhD graduates ranked them in the top 5% or 10%.

In addition to the large number of invited conference speeches he has given, he has been an invited plenary/extended/keynote speaker of several IEEE and other conferences and workshops including EuCAP 2020 Copenhagen, Denmark; URSI’19 Seville, Spain; and 23rd ICECOM 2019, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Karu received BSc degree in electronic and telecommunication engineering with First Class Honours from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and MASc and PhD degrees with near-perfect GPA in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada.