Speaker biographies
Find out more about those speaking at this event
Bill Dawber
Dr Dawber obtained his BA (Hons) in physics from Oxford University in 1986. He then went onto complete an MSc 'Optoelectronics and laser devices' and a PhD 'RF analysis using optical signal processing' from St Andrews University. In 1991 he joined the Admiralty Research Establishment, Funtington where he carried out active and passive electro-optic sensor and signal processing research.
In 1998 he joined the Ship Radar Group at DERA Portsdown West where he led research into radar signal processing. He is currently the Technical Manager for the 'Maritime weapon system integration' business group at QinetiQ, Portsdown Technology Park, where he leads the naval radar research programmes. Dr Dawber has published over 90 internal and external reports, including 6 patents. He is a QinetiQ Fellow and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Clive Alabaster
Dr. Clive M. Alabaster received his BSc degree in Physics with Microelectronics from University College Swansea, Wales, in 1985 and his PhD from Cranfield University, Shrivenham in 2004. From 1985 to 1992 he worked as a microwave design and development engineer on airborne radar systems with GEC Marconi, Milton Keynes, England. From 1992 to 1998 he worked as a lecturer in radar techniques at Arborfield Garrison, near Reading, England.
He joined Cranfield University at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, in 1998 as a lecturer in the Radar Systems group within the Department of Aerospace, Power and Sensors. His research interests include the optimisation of radar waveforms, radar, dielectric materials and the measurement of permittivity, particularly in the millimetre wave band. He is a member of the Institute of Physics and is a Chartered Engineer.
Evan Hughes
Dr. Evan J. Hughes received his BEng and MEng degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bradford, England, in 1993 and 1994 respectively. From 1993 to 1995 he worked as a design engineer with GEC Marconi, Leicester. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 from Cranfield University at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, England. His primary research interests include noisy multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, swarm guidance, data fusion, artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, intelligent agents and radar systems.
He is a member of both the IET and the IEEE and is a Chartered Engineer. He received the prize for best paper at GALESIA '97, Glasgow, UK, won the Evolutionary Checkers Competitions at CEC 2001, Seoul, S. Korea and WCCI 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, and won the Time Series Prediction Competition at WCCI 2002. He is currently working as a senior lecturer for the Radar Systems group in the Department of Aerospace, Power and Sensors.
David Blacknell
Professor Blacknell holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Mathematics from Cambridge University, an M.Sc. from University College London, a Ph.D. from Sheffield University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He worked at the GEC-Marconi Research Centre from 1984 to 1991 and at QinetiQ (formerly DERA) from 1991 to 2007 where he led radar image exploitation activities within the Centre for Signal and Information Processing and was awarded a QinetiQ Fellowship in 2002.
He took up a Chair in Radar Systems at Cranfield University in April 2007. Professor Blacknell has worked on a large variety of topics in radar signal and image processing during his career and is a recognised international expert on automatic target recognition in radar imagery. He has published over 70 journal and conference papers.
David Hannah
David Hannah has been engaged with civil and naval radar for 45 years. Previously employed by Kelvin Hughes and attaining the positions of Chief Engineer, Engineering Manager and progressing to Technical Executive, he more recently established a Technical Consultancy (Navaids) specialising in radar performance and Radar Standards.
In this role, he has led an international working group as project manager to provide a Test Standard for Shipborne Radar and was able to apply a relevant combination of management, equipment design and seagoing experience. David is also a member of the Royal Institute of Navigation and Radar Rapporteur for CIRM.
Geoffery Herbert
Geoffrey Herbert received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from York University in 1992. He undertook research on non-linear reaction-diffusion systems in the physics department at Warwick University and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1996. He has worked at QinetiQ in Malvern since March 1996 in the field of adaptive beamforming for phased array radar systems.
Areas of radar research with which he has been involved include: sidelobe control, clutter modelling, the performance of STAP in wide-band and bistatic scenarios, polarization adaptation, and the effect of platform rotation on STAP. He has published a number of papers in IET journals and at international radar conferences.
Glen Davidson
Glen is a principal engineer at Thales UK, Crawley. He is currently working on a civil programme using sensor and information fusion to enable UAVs to operate in civil airspace. With 10 years experience in radar systems research and application, Glen also maintains a keen interest in Radar Resource Management, Tracking and SAR Image Processing & Analysis. His involvement in radar clutter research began as a visiting university student at Malvern, soon followed by a PhD at UCL.
Paul Rose
Paul Rose is a Lead Radar Systems Engineer working for SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems Limited in Edinburgh. He spent the first 19 years of his working life as an engineer officer in the Royal Air Force and has been with SELEX since November 2002.
Paul obtained his bachelor’s degree in aerosystems engineering from the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham in 1987 and earned an MSc in Advanced Systems Engineering from Loughborough University in 1992. His current topics of interest include the simulation and performance prediction of airborne radars and antennas.
Chris Finlay
Chris Finlay is a Senior Antenna Engineer working for SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems Limited in Edinburgh. He has spent 17 years of his working life in this field, after 4 years at ATC Great Baddow he joined SELEX in 1994. Chris obtained his bachelor’s degree in Theoretical Physics from Exeter University in 1978 and earned an MSc in Theoretical High Energy Physics from Southampton in 1980. His current topics of interest include the simulation and performance prediction of airborne radars and antennas, with a specialist interest in radome effects.