sustained EB-1A Case: Electronic Engineering

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invasion of persona\ priv aq 
U.S. Department of Homeland Security 
20 Mass. Ave., N.W., Rm. 3000 
Washington, DC 20529 
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U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
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FILE: WAC 05 0 1 1 50 189 Office: CALFORNIA SERVICE CENTER Date: 
PETITION: 
 Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker as an Alien of Extraordinary Ability Pursuant to Section 
203(b)(l)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. $ 1153(b)(l)(A) 
ON BEHALF OF PETITIONER: 
INSTRUCTIONS: 
This is the decision of the Administrative Appeals Office in your case. All documents have been returned to 
the office that originally decided your case. Any further inquiry must be made to that office. 
u 
5~obert P. Wiernann, Chief 
Administrative Appeals Office 
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DISCUSSION: The employment-based immigrant visa petition was denied by the Director, California Service 
Center, and is now before the Administrative Appeals Office on appeal. The appeal will be sustained and the 
petition will be approved. 
The petitioner seeks classification as an employment-based immigrant pursuant to section 203(b)(l)(A) of the 
Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act), 8 U.S.C. $ 1 153(b)(l)(A), as an alien of extraordinary ability in 
the sciences. The director determined the petitioner had not established the sustained national or international 
acclaim necessary to qualify for classification as an alien of extraordinary ability. 
On appeal, counsel argues that the petitioner meets at least three of the regulatory criteria required for 
classification as an alien of extraordinary ability. 
Section 203(b) of the Act states, in pertinent part, that: 
(I) Priority Workers. -- Visas shall first be made available . . . to qualified immigrants who are aliens 
described in any of the following subparagraphs (A) through (C): 
(A) Aliens with Extraordinary Ability. -- An alien is described in this subparagraph if -- 
(i) the alien has extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or 
athletics which has been demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim 
and whose achievements have been recognized in the field through extensive 
documentation, 
(ii) the alien seeks to enter the United States to continue work in the area of 
extraordinary ability, and 
(iii) the alien's entry to the United States will substantially benefit prospectively the 
United States. 
Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) have 
consistently recognized that Congress intended to set a very high standard for individuals seeking immigrant 
visas as aliens of extraordinary ability. See 56 Fed. Reg. 60897, 60898-9 (November 29, 1991). As used in 
this section, the term "extraordinary ability" means a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of 
that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor. 8 C.F.R. $ 204.5(h)(2). The 
specific requirements for supporting documents to establish that an alien has sustained national or 
international acclaim and recognition in his or her field of expertise are set forth in the regulation at 8 C.F.R. 
$ 204.5(h)(3). The relevant criteria will be addressed below. It should be reiterated, however, that the 
petitioner must show that he has earned sustained national or international acclaim at the very top level. 
This petition, filed on October 15, 2004, seeks to classify the petitioner as an alien with extraordinary ability 
in the field of electronic engineering. At the time of filing, the petitioner was employed as a Professor in the 
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Soonchunhyang University in Korea. The petitioner also 
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serves as Chief of the Radio Frequency and Microwave Component Research Center at Soonchunhyang 
University. 
The regulation at 8 C.F.R. fj 204.5(h)(3) indicates that an alien can establish sustained national or 
international acclaim through evidence of a one-time achievement (that is, a major, international recognized 
award). Barring the alien's receipt of such an award, the regulation outlines ten criteria, at least three of 
which must be satisfied for an alien to establish the sustained acclaim necessary to qualify as an alien of 
extraordinary ability. We find that the petitioner's evidence satisfies the following three criteria. 
Evidence of the alien's participation, either individually or on a panel, as a judge of the work of 
others in the same or an alliedfield of spec2fication for which class$cation is sought. 
The petitioner submitted evidence showing that he served as an editorial board member for the Institute of 
Electronics Engineers Korea. The petitioner also submitted evidence showing that he provided peer review 
services for the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and 
Techniques, and IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. We find that the preceding evidence is 
adequate to satisfy this criterion. 
Evidence of the alien S original scientiJic, scholarly, artistic, athletic, or business-related 
contributions of major signzficance in the field. 
The director's May 16, 2005 request for evidence notice stated: "It appears that the beneficiary has met this 
category." However, in the December 14, 2005 notice of decision denying the petition, the director 
concluded: "This criterion has not been met." The director's request for evidence did not afford the 
petitioner the opportunity to respond to deficiencies in the evidence as they relate to this criterion. 
Nevertheless, we find that the record adequately demonstrates the petitioner's invention of Defected Ground 
Structure technology qualifies as a contribution of major significance in his field. The petitioner submitted 
several letters of support discussing this technology and his achievements in the microwave circuit 
engineering field. 
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Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles, states: 
[The petitioner] has published more than hundred [sic] papers in international journals and 
conferences. Especially, [the petitioner] has developed a number of unique and interesting 
microwave and wireless circuit structures. In particular he is the pioneer of a special circuit 
component call (Defected Ground Structure). This structure has an enormous capability to reduce the 
circuit size considerably. For instance, the DGS can be used for realization of a bandstop filter that 
has a small fraction of the physical size of the periodic PBG (Photonic Band Gap) based filter. [The 
petitioner] has already established modeling this structure for several practical applications and has 
proven their usefulness in number of applications such as passive components including filters and 
antennas as well as active components including amplifiers and oscillators. The results of his idea are 
widely recognized in the microwave and wireless community and are followed by a large number of 
researchers worldwide. 
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, Professor of Elechlcal Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada, states: 
I knew [the petitioner] . . . from his invention of the so-called Defected Ground Structures (DGSs), as 
I had read several of his excellent papers on this topic. DGSs are planar structures including 
patterned slots in the metallic plane, called the ground plane, located below the substrate supporting 
conventional circuitry and interacting in a subtle manner with this circuitry for various purposes. 
This invention has paved the road for a new generation of microwave components with extremely 
useful miniaturization and filtering properties. In addition to introducing the genius idea of 
enhancing microwave circuits by judiciously patterning their ground plane, [the petitioner] has 
established a full theory with appropriate modellization [sic] tools for the practical design of DGSs 
and has proven their usefulness in several applications, including Active Integrated Antennas, already 
widely recognized in the microwave community. 
This letter is to confirm that [the petitioner] as a technical consultant of Telwave Inc. in Hwasung, 
Korea has been taking a leading role in the invention of patents Telwave Inc. has and holds, and that 
all creative ideas of them were suggested by [the petitioner]. 
[The petitioner's] ideas have been used to develop passive components for cellular communication 
system. 
- letter specifically identifies multiple patents from the United States, Korea, and Japan that 
are attributable to the petitioner. 
Patent Examiner and Microwave Engineer, Korean Intellectual Property Office, states: 
"[The petitioner] proposed DGS (defected ground structure) for the first time, which is a periodic structure for 
microwave transmission line. It is being proven through so many papers that DGS is a powerful periodic 
structure to be applied to extensive RF [Radio Frequency] and microwave circuits." 
National University, Korea, states: 
The petitioner is a prominent internationally well known scholar and a distinguished engineer in the 
field of advanced RF and microwave passive circuit design. He has authored and coauthored more 
than a hundred professional papers on RF and microwave circuit engineering, and those papers have 
been published and presented in prestigious international and domestic journals and conferences. His 
research on a new circuit designs which he named it Detected Ground Structure (DGS) are now 
widely used by engineers around the world and in their own research in a variety of way [sic]. 
In the same manner as earlier witnesses, mentions the petitioner's publication record, which is more 
relevant to the criterion at 8 C.F.R. Ij 204.5(h)(3)(vi). Publication, by itself, is not a strong indication of 
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impact in one's field, because the act of publishing an article does not compel others to read it or absorb its 
influence. Yet publication can nevertheless provide a very persuasive and credible avenue for establishing the 
greater field's reaction to the petitioner's DGS technology. If a given article in a prestigious journal (such as 
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.) attracts the attention of other researchers, 
those researchers will cite the source article in their own published work, in much the same way that the 
petitioner himself has cited sources in his own articles. Numerous independent citations would provide solid 
evidence that other researchers have been influenced by the petitioner's work and are familiar with it. In 
response to the director's request for evidence, the petitioner submitted a citation index reflecting an 
aggregate of 39 cites to a paper he coauthored in 2000 entitled "A novel 1-D periodic defected ground 
structure for planar circuits." On appeal, the petitioner submits a citation index reflecting an aggregate of 
more than 100 cites to a paper he first-authored in 2001 entitled "Design of the low-pass filter using the novel 
microstnp defected ground structure." This unusually large number of citations supports the preceding 
witnesses' claims that the petitioner's work is of major significance in the microwave circuit engineering 
field. 
We find that the record adequately demonstrates the petitioner's contnbutions are important not only to the 
research institutions where he has worked, but throughout the greater field as well. Leading engineering 
scientists from around the world have acknowledged the value of the petitioner's work and its major 
significance to the electronic engineering community. Therefore, we find that the petitioner's evidence 
satisfies this criterion. 
Evidence of the alien's authorship of scholarly articles in the field, in professional or major trade 
publications or other major media. 
The petitioner submitted evidence of his authorship of articles appearing in publications such as IEEE 
Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques and IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters. The 
petitioner also submitted evidence of scores of articles that cite his work. The unusually large number of cites 
to the petitioner's articles demonstrates widespread interest in, and reliance on, his work. Therefore, we find 
that the petitioner's evidence is adequate to satisfy this criterion. 
Accordingly, the petitioner has satisfied three of the regulatory criteria required for classification as an alien 
of extraordinary ability. Pursuant to the statute and regulations as they are currently constituted, the petitioner 
qualifies for the classification sought. 
In review, we find that the totality of the evidence establishes an overall pattern of sustained national and 
international acclaim and extraordinary ability in the electronic engineering field. The petitioner has also 
established that he seeks to continue working in the same field in the United States and that his entry into the 
United States will substantially benefit prospectively the United States. Therefore, the petitioner has 
overcome the stated grounds for denial and thereby established eligibility for the benefits sought under 
section 203 of the Act. 
The burden of proof in visa petition proceedings remains entirely with the petitioner. Section 291 of the Act, 
8 U.S.C. 1361. The petitioner has sustained that burden. Accordingly, the decision of the director denying 
the petition will be withdrawn and the petition will be approved. 
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ORDER: 
 The appeal is sustained and the petition is approved.