Staffordshire University student Maja Benson is the first woman at Staffordshire University to be awarded a PhD in engineering for pioneering work on mobile phone systems.
She recently completed a thesis to develop practical techniques to utilise the airwaves better so that more mobile phone users can be accommodated.
Her work included neural networks and signal processing techniques, which are able to adapt to improve the performance of cellular mobile phones.
Maja, a former student at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, came to the United Kingdom in 1993 to complete her engineering degree.
She began her PhD in 1994, publishing six conference papers and one journal paper during the course of her research.