Appendix C
Speaker Biographies
James Armitage is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. As a former vice president and sector chief technology officer for Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, he was responsible for the sector’s overall technology strategy and development plans. Armitage’s career began as a design engineer in the Antenna and Microwave Department at Westinghouse, where he pioneered the development of low observable apertures and active electronically scanned arrays. His technical leadership led to a number of roles in business development and program management. During his 36 years with Westinghouse and Northrop Grumman, he served in a variety of executive and leadership roles. In 1984, Armitage received the IEEE Aerospace Electronic Systems Society Centennial Key to the Future Award as the outstanding young engineer. He also served on the Defense Science Board Global Surveillance Task Force and is a member of the IEEE International Radar Conference Board, having served as treasurer in 1995 and as general chairman for the 2010 Conference. In 1998, he completed the Harvard University General Manager Program. Armitage earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Ohio State University in 1975 and an M.S. in applied physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1980.
Luke Feldner is a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the Special Technologies Department of the Systems Assessment and Research Center, where he manages several research and development programs related to U.S. national security interests. As a member of the Department of Energy’s Field Intelligence Element at Sandia, he lends technical, analytical, and research support to the federal law enforcement, intelligence, and defense communities. From 2001 to 2006, Feldner worked in Sandia’s Electronics Systems Center as an RF/microwave circuit and antenna designer in the Advanced Radar Development Group. He has been actively involved in the analysis, measurement, and design of advanced antenna and RF systems for more than a dozen years and has developed and conducted multiple training exercises for government and military field officers. Feldner is a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation, Microwave Theory and Techniques, and Communications Societies, as well as the Center for Strategic and International Studies project on Nuclear Issues. He received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and the Dipl.-Ing. (FH) degree in electrical engineering from the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Lübeck, Germany, in 1999; an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001; and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Mexico in 2006.
Timothy M. Hancock received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, where he was involved with the development of SiGe integrated microwave components from 6 to 77 GHz. In the past he worked for Conexant Systems on a single-chip GPS receiver and at M/A-COM on a Silicon Germanium 24 GHz automotive radar solution. For 6 years he was a staff member in the Analog Device Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he was involved with the development of low-power, small-form-factor
wireless devices and reconfigurable and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems in work focused on integrated circuit design and wireless system design. As assistant leader of the same group since 2011, he has continued to develop programs in the area of MIMO communications and small-form-factor wireless devices as well as technology for radar and ELINT systems.
Robert Newgard is the director of the Advanced Radio Systems within the Advanced Technology Center at Rockwell Collins, Inc. His principal technical responsibilities are in the design and development of airborne communication systems and technologies. Newgard has performed as principal investigator on numerous Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA)-funded research programs, including the Chip-Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC), Next Generation Spectral Sensor (XG), Analog Spectral Processors (ASP), Dynamics-Enabled Frequency Source (DEFYS), and Chip-Scale Spectrum Analyzers (CSSA). Newgard’s department is focused on the development of technologies and systems focused on the high-performance radio frequency (RF) front ends. Included in this focus are antennas, receivers, transmitters, synthesizers, photonics, and frequency standards.
Lon Pringle is the principal research scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute and is the director of the Signature Technology Laboratory. Pringle’s research encompasses infrared phenomenology, advanced infrared measurements and simulations, the detection and tracking of low observable targets in clutter, the management and control of optical energy by active and passive techniques, radiative energy transfer processes in optical color transparencies and prints, adaptive signature control technologies, radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) seeker and fuze designs, advanced RF beam forming using phase-only control (as contrasted with amplitude and phase control), and recently a revolutionary new methodology for the design of wideband, multi-function, reconfigurable apertures. This research led to more than 25 technical publications, and two patents and was supported by approximately $18 million in sponsorship, for $9.5 million of which Pringle has served as project director/principal investigator. Of special note has been his successful direction of the DARPA-sponsored reconfigurable aperture program and its follow-on application in the Future Combat System program.
Yahya Rahmat-Samii (NAE) received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. degree, with highest distinction, in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran. Before joining UCLA in 1989, he was a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and was a guest professor at the Technical University of Denmark (TUD) in the summer of 1986. He has also been a consultant to many aerospace companies. He served as chair of UCLA’s Electrical Engineering Department from April 2000 through June 2005. Since 2007, he has held the Northrop Grumman Chair in Electromagnetics at UCLA. Rahmat-Samii has authored and co-authored more than 750 technical journal articles and conference papers, has written 25 book chapters, is the co-author of three books, and holds several patents. He has made pioneering research contributions in diverse areas of electromagnetics, antennas, measurement and diagnostics techniques, numerical and asymptotic methods, satellite and personal communications, antennas for remote sensing and astronomical applications, human/antenna interactions, frequency selective surfaces, electromagnetic and photonic band gap structures, and the applications of genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization. On several occasions, Rahmat-Samii’s work has been featured on journal covers and in magazines, as well as in several TV newscasts.
Sebastian Rowson is one of the founders and also the chief scientist at Ethertronics, a privately held antenna design and manufacturing company that manufactures primarily embedded antennas
for personal and industrial wireless devices. Ethertronics has annual shipments of about 100 million units to clients that include Samsung, LG Electronics, and Motorola. Ethertronics co-founders Laurent Desclos and Sebastian Rowson started the company in 2000 to commercialize new antenna technology known as IMD (isolated magnetic dipole). Rowson has filed 49 patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and 30 of those have currently been issued. He has also served as the director of technology transfer and as a senior engineer at Ethertronics. Previously, Rowson was a research engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned his M.S. and a Ph.D. at the University of Paris-Sud. Rowson is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Mark Schrote is a senior consulting engineer with Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems. He received his BSEE, MSEE, and Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1978, 1980, and 1983, respectively from Ohio State University. Schrote has more than 28 years of experience in active electronically scanned array design, focusing on advanced development systems.
