The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), NTIA’s research and engineering laboratory in Boulder, Colo., provides critical support to NTIA and other agencies by performing basic and applied research in radio science—which enables every wireless communications device, from smart phones, to military radars, to space satellites to operate.
As part of our efforts to expand the reach of this important work, I am pleased to announce the launch of a new Senior Technical Fellow program to enhance the Institute’s focus on scientific excellence and engineering innovation. It also provides a more formalized way to sustain and share ITS technical expertise with the Institute’s younger generation of engineers. The program recognizes the outstanding technical achievements of senior ITS researchers and allows them to devote more time to training and mentoring junior and mid-level scientists and engineers.
Frank Sanders, who has served as Chief of the Telecommunications Theory Division, has been named as the first senior technical fellow under the new ITS program. He is a renowned subject matter expert on radar system design, radar spectrum emissions, and radar receiver sensitivity to interference, and on the analysis and resolution of electromagnetic compatibility problems.
Under this program, senior technical fellows will also document and refine processes, procedures, techniques and best practices and transfer that knowledge, both within and outside ITS. Sanders already has a track record in this area. He developed an international best-practices reference for measuring radar emissions for spectrum compliance purposes. In addition, many of Sanders’ 67 publications and reports on radio science have been widely used and referenced by NTIA, other government agencies and industry in the areas of spectrum sharing and general radio interference problem resolution.
We look forward to the exciting contributions that Sanders and future senior technical fellows will make to advancing communications research and innovation.