received the B. E. E. degree from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH in 1983, the M.S.E.E. degree from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH in 1987, and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI in 1997.
He joined the staff of the Communications, Instrumentation, and Controls Division at NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH in 1983 where he was a senior research engineer; he is now retired. In 1997-1998 and in 2000-2001, he was a visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He has authored and co-authored 200 papers in refereed journals and symposia proceedings.
Dr. Ponchak is a Fellow of the IEEE. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions Microwave Theory and Techniques from 2010-2013 and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters from 2006-2009. He was an elected member of IEEE MTT-S Administrative Committee (2010-2018), served on the Editorial Board of MDPI Sensors journal (2018-2022) and of the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer Aided Engineering (2005-2019). He received the 2014 MTT-S N. Walter Cox Award that recognizes an IEEE MTT-S member who has given exemplary service, the 2023 IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Service Award and the Best Paper of the ISHM’97 30th International Symposium on Microelectronics Award.