Leda Lunardi (Fellow, IEEE) is a professor the Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in physics from the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, in 1976 and 1979, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1985.Currently she is the ECE director of graduate programs and the Carolinas Photonics Consortium campus director at NC State. From 2005-2007, she served as a program director for the Electrical Cyber Communication Systems Division, at the National Science Foundation (Engineering Directorate) where her program included Optical, Wireless and Hybrid Communications Systems, Terahertz (THz) Sensing and Imaging ,Wireless Networks of Handheld and Wearable Computing Devices, Transmitters, Receivers, Antennas, Sensors, and Intra- and inter-chip Networking and Communications, Microwave and Millimeter wave devices and well as Mixed mode devices. After her doctorate studies, Dr. Lunardi joined AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill and then Crawford Hill where her research was on high speed heterojunction devices, novel structures, long wavelength optoelectronic receivers and optical microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Prior joining academia, she had a brief stint as a senior scientist and group leader at JDS Uniphase, NJ and was a technical consultant for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Electronics Technology Office) in Arlington, VA. She is an IEEE technical volunteer and has continuously served in several technical and executive conference committees, government ad hoc committees for grants and projects reviews. She is the editor for the IEEE Transactions of Electron Devices, Optoelectronics Devices since 2003. She is the co-recipient of the 2000 IEEE/LEOS Engineering Achievement Award for the design and development of high performance of long wavelength optoelectronics integrated circuits (OEICs).