IMS2011 will hold a Closing Ceremony on Thursday afternoon between 1620 and 1720 in the Ballroom of the Baltimore Convention Center. In the same way that the Plenary Session formally opens IMS2011, the Closing Ceremony will mark the official close of the contributed Technical Program. We invite all Microwave Week participants to join us and enjoy some refreshments while we conclude IMS2011.

The highlight of the Closing Ceremony will be a presentation by Dr. Joseph Guerci entitled “Cognitive Radar”. We think that Dr. Guerci’s knowledge and insight into future system needs will provide a great way to close IMS2011 as it will give all of us incentive to push the state of the art in microwave materials, devices, components, and circuits as we think ahead to Montreal where we will reconvene for IMS2012.

As you know, at IMS2011 we introduced a new student competition called the Graduate Student Challenge. Students competing will have been working all week and will have just finished making their presentation earlier Thursday afternoon. The Closing Ceremony will be the venue for recognizing the winners of this challenge. It will also be IMS2011’s opportunity to present a few other awards and recognition to deserving individuals.

The Closing Ceremony presents an opportunity for the IMS2011 Steering Committee to thank all the attendees for their contributions to making IMS2011 a success. IMS2011 will also be introducing the IMS2012 Steering Committee so that they can tell you all about next year’s IMS2012 in Montreal.

Abstract: The continued “digitization” of radar front-ends and resultant transmit-receive flexibility, coupled with advances in advanced knowledge-aided (KA) high performance embedded computing (HPEC), have afforded a unique opportunity for a leap-ahead capability in a radar’s ability to adapt to complex target environment scenarios. This talk provides an overview of one of the latest adaptive radar architectures to emerge from the nascent field of cognitive radar.

Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Guerci has over 25 years of experience in advanced technology research and development in government, industrial, and academic settings. His government service included a recent 7 year term with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in which he held the positions of Program Manager, Deputy Office Director, and finally Director of the Special Projects Office (SPO). In these capacities, Dr. Guerci was involved in the inception, research, development, execution, and ultimately transition of next generation multidisciplinary defense technologies.

Dr. Guerci is a recognized leader in the research and development of next generation sensor systems and adaptive signal processing. In particular, he has pioneered several advanced radar technologies including robust and knowledge-aided space-time adaptive processing (STAP), and optimal and adaptive MIMO radar and waveform design. In addition to authoring over 100 peer reviewed articles, he has several book chapters and is the author of Space-Time Adaptive Processing for Radar (Artech House, 2003), and the recently published Cognitive Radar: The Knowledge-Aided Fully Adaptive Approach, (Artech House, 2010). Dr. Guerci also recently received the IEEE Warren D. White Award for “Excellence in Radar Adaptive Processing and Waveform Diversity”, and the IEEE/IEE Waveform Diversity Person of the Year for 2010 for “For Scientific, Technical, and Executive Leadership Contributions in Making Waveform Diversity a Fielded Technology“. He has also recently been appointed the General Chair for the 2015 IEEE International Radar Conference.

A graduate of Polytechnic University with a Ph.D.E.E (System Engineering), Dr. Guerci has held adjunct professorships in engineering and applied mathematics at The City University of New York, Polytechnic University, The Cooper Union for Advancement of Art and Science, and Virginia Tech. Additionally, he has held senior engineer and scientist positions in industry and was recently Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for SAIC’s Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) Group. A member of the IEEE Radar Systems panel, he is also a Fellow of the IEEE for “Contributions to Advanced Radar Theory and its Embodiment in Real-World Systems”, holds eight US Patents, and is a member of several industrial, academic, and government advisory boards.