Fred Daum

2024
IEEE DENNIS J. PICARD MEDAL FOR RADAR TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS

Sponsored by RTX

For research, design, development, analysis, and testing of complex phased array radar systems, making them work in the real world

Frederick Daum has designed, analyzed, and tested essentially all of the advanced algorithms in long-range phased array radars built by the USA in the last four decades, and he has made these complex radar systems work in the real world. His research has directly benefited the national defense of the USA and many other nations across the globe. Early warning radars are an important deterrent to nuclear war as ballistic missile defense could save millions of lives in a nuclear attack. Defense of ships against attack by aircraft and cruise missiles is also crucial for both deterrence of war, as well as saving lives in actual conflicts. Additionally, space surveillance of satellites and intelligence data collection greatly aid the national defense of the USA and many other countries. However, getting these advanced phased array radar systems to work reliably in the real world was not easy. Many papers and books predicted that it was simply not possible. For example, a panel of experts convened by the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote that the task of developing tracking and discrimination algorithms and real-time software for missile defense applications is “exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.” Nevertheless, Daum’s tracking and discrimination and adaptive real-time radar scheduling algorithms and software have been successfully tested in the real world with extremely dense multi-target environments. In addition, Daum has widely shared his unclassified work by publishing over 100 technical papers and giving many talks at prestigious conferences and universities around the world. His papers are highly cited, as witnessed by his h-index of 29, which is in the top one percent for all researchers and within the top tenth of a percent for engineers in the defense industry.

An IEEE Fellow, Daum is Principal Fellow, Raytheon, Carlisle, Massachusetts, USA.

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