2012 Program

The 2012 USNC-URSI NRSM program is now available. Click here for the program overview.

We encourage everyone to attend the Plenary Session on Thursday, January 5 (see agenda below).

Plenary Session

Thursday, January 5, 2012

8:20 - Noon

Mathematics Auditorium

University of Colorado at Boulder

Meeting Highlight: Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Radio Science

Co-Chairs: Frank Lind, MIT Haystack Observatory, USNC Commission G Chair, 2009-2011

Bill Amatucci, Naval Research Laboratory, USNC Commission H Chair, 2009-2011

Keynote Speakers:

Anthea Coster

MIT Haystack Observatory

Westford, MA

Anthea Coster is a research scientist in the Atmospheric Science group at MIT Haystack Observatory. Prior to this position, she worked for more than 20 years as a technical staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the space surveillance group. She received her Ph.D. in Space Physics and Astronomy from Rice University in 1983 under the guidance of William E. Gordon. Her graduate research involved ionospheric heating experiments at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Her professional interests include physics of the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and thermosphere, GPS positioning and measurement accuracy, space weather and storm time effects, and magnetosphere and ionosphere coupling. She is also a lecturer and organizer for the NSF sponsored incoherent scatter radar summer school.

Her involvement with GPS began in 1985, with a TI-4100 GPS receiver. In 1991, together with her coworkers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, she developed the first real-time ionospheric monitoring system based on GPS. In 1995, she conducted the Westford Water Vapor experiment, which was one of the initial experiments to verify that GPS could be used to obtain accurate, near-real time information on the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere. Dr. Coster has also been involved with measuring atmospheric disturbances over short baselines (GPS networks smaller than 100 km) for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and has coordinated meteor research using the ALTAIR dual-frequency radar for NASA. More recently, she and her colleagues demonstrated the existence of mid-latitude storm enhanced density plumes using GPS data. She has authored or co-authored over 60 refereed journal articles. She is a member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the Institute of Navigation (I.O.N.), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). She is the past chair and vice-chair of Commission G, USNC-URSI, a former member of the science steering committee of NSF’s CEDAR program (Coupling, Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions), and she has served on the Institute of Navigation Council in a variety of positions.

Chris Hegarty

MITRE Corporation

Bedford, MA

Dr. Christopher J. Hegarty is the Director for CNS Engineering & Spectrum with The MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development. He received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a D.Sc. in electrical engineering from the George Washington University. He has been with MITRE since 1992, working primarily on aviation applications of GPS. Dr. Hegarty currently serves as chair of RTCA’s Program Management Committee and also as co-chair of RTCA’s Special Committee 159 on GNSS. He served as editor of the Institute of Navigation (ION)’s quarterly journal NAVIGATION from 1997 to 2006 and as president of the ION in 2008. He is the co-author of the textbook Understanding GPS: Principles and Applications, 2nd Edition and co-editor of Artech House’s GNSS Technology and Applications book series.

For his contributions to the development of satellite navigation systems, Dr. Hegarty has been the recipient of numerous honors including the ION Johannes Kepler Award, the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Hobart Newell Award. He is a Fellow of both the ION and the IEEE.