Professor Jim Breakall
Professor of Electrical Engineering225 Electrical Engineering East |
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VitaeJ. K. Breakall was born in Pittsburgh, PA. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University, University Park, PA, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. He was an NSF Resident at the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center, Arecibo, Puerto Rico, in 1977, working on antenna modeling and ionospheric research. From 1983 to 1988 he was a Project Engineer with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, where he developed and applied electromagnetic modeling computer codes, specifically the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC). He used these codes and experimental techniques for solving various problems, mainly involving antenna analysis and design. From 1988 to 1989 he was an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, where he was engaged in electromagnetic modeling and antenna analysis projects. He is presently an Associate Professor and holder of the Charles H. Fetter Fellowship in the Electrical Engineering Department and Communications and Space Sciences Laboratory, Penn State University. He also has a Split Appointment with the Electromagnetics Department of the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State and has numerous research projects for the U.S. Navy and other government and industrial organizations, mainly concerned with antenna modeling and propagation. He has recently received a patent for an invention called the Three-Dimensional Frequency-Independent Phased-Array (3D-FIPA). Dr. Breakall's current and funded research interests involve development of techniques and a workstation package for high fidelity electromagnetic modeling including antennas, platforms, terrain and their interaction. He also is working on several new wideband antenna designs and developing a measurement system for characterizing propagation over irregular terrain. All of this work involves individual and hybrid combinations of method of moment (MoM), geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD), and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) techniques. Dr. Breakall is a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, URSI Commission B ( International Union of Radio Science), Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society, and Eta Kappa Nu. He has served on the Board of Directors, the ADCOM, and was Treasurer and an Editor for the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society and received its Mainstay Award in 1995. He also has received a Best Paper award from the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. Dr. Breakall is an Associate Editor for the journal Radio Science and is a member of the Arecibo Observatory Advisory Board. LinksCommunications and Space Sciences Laboratory (CSSL) |