Umran Inan received his bachelor's degree in 1972 and M.S. in 1973 from the Middle East Technical University. He conducted his doctoral research during four years at Stanford University, receiving his PhD in 1977 in electrical engineering. Umran Inan later joined the staff of Stanford University as research affiliate and in 1982 was appointed as assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He became associate professor in 1985 and receiving the professor title at Stanford University in 1992. In 1997 he was appointed director of Space, Telecommunications and Radio Science Laboratories connected to the Stanford University and continued his duty here until September 2009. During his academic career at Stanford he worked in areas geophysics, near-space, ionospheric and atmospheric physics, radiation belts, electromagnetic wave-particle interaction, and very low frequency radioscience. Inan has had about 50 PhD students so far. He has been the president of Koç University since 2009. Currently, the research group at Stanford University is conducting observations from over 50 different spots on seven continents and also from a variety of world-orbiting satellites. He became professor emeritus at Stanford in 2011, and remains active there along with his duties at Koç University. Inan has over 323 refereed scientific and technical papers. With his brother, Aziz İnan, he has authored three textbooks on electromagnetics:
Principles of Plasma Physics for Scientists and Engineers
The first two textbooks were then combined into a second edition, Engineering Electromagnetics and Waves, by the same two authors along with Ryan Said.
Membership and awards
Umran Inan has been active member of various organizations since 1973 and he has been awarded by many institutions so far. As a member of International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Radio Science Association, The American Physics Society, The Electromagnetic Academy, Academy of Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi Academy and TUBA, he was also awarded by Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA with group achievement award in years 1983, 1998 and 2004.
Research at Stanford
Research activities at Stanford include
Effects of lightning on the ionosphere and magnetosphere
Precipitating electrons from the radiation belts caused by VLF waves, both natural and manmade
Generation of ELF/VLF waves with the HAARP facility in Alaska
Wave-particle interactions between ELF/VLF waves and energetic radiation belt particles
VLF remote sensing of ionospheric disturbances from cosmic gamma-ray sources