Professor Charles Croskey

Vitae

Since 1977, Dr. Croskey has taught a number of courses in the Department of Electrical Engineering, including undergraduate and graduate courses in communications, digital logic, electromagnetics, and remote sensing. He most often teaches a laboratory course for design projects and junior- and senior-level electronic circuit design and analysis courses. He has an ongoing interest in bringing technology to the classroom (Croskey, 1990).  Through the years he has written a number of computer programs for classroom demonstrations. He currently is leading the “industrial strength” sections of EE 403W, the senior capstone design course.  Through coordination with the Penn State Learning Factory the student projects in these sections are sponsored by industries from throughout the area. He presently chairs the Undergraduate Committee for the Department, is a University Scholars honors advisor, and supervises both honors and graduate theses. Dr. Croskey also has been director and lecturer for a three-day short course on solid state electronics that has been presented at various locations throughout the United States and given also in Mexico, Canada, and Europe. In spring 1990, Dr. Croskey taught two courses at the Helsinki University of Technology as a Fulbright Scholar.

Dr. Croskey's research interests utilize both in situ and remote sensing instruments of the middle atmosphere. He has been responsible for the design, construction, and data analysis of more than 95 electronic instrumentation packages (Croskey et al., 1992a) that measure the electrical parameters of the middle atmosphere and lower thermosphere. These rocket-borne experiment systems are designed to determine the electrical nature of the atmosphere. These instrumentation rocket payloads are launched by NASA both within the United States and at international locations, depending upon the geophysical conditions under study. Recent scientific goals have included the propagation of electric field energy from  thunderstorms into the ionosphere, the electrical structure associated with noctilucent clouds, and determination of turbulence and energy deposition/coupling mechanisms throughout the middle atmosphere (along with Dr. John Mitchell). For many of these sounding-rocket experiments, Penn State builds the complete instrument payload, rather than just the sensor package. One of the benefits of this in-house capability for payload development has been the attainment of very a high packing density and more complete control of the electrical cleanliness of the payload.  Dr. Croskey is also a co-investigator for the undergraduate student-built sounding rocket payload (SPIRIT: Student Projects Involving Rocket Instrumentation Techniques) (www.psu.edu/spacegrant/spirit/index.html), which will soon be launched at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.

Dr. Croskey has also been involved in remote sensing measurements of the middle atmosphere. Ground-based microwave radiometer observations of water vapor in the 30-to-85 km altitude region (Bevilacqua et al., 1989) have been made. These microwave receivers operate at 22 GHz and require a very low noise front end. Originally a MASER was used for the low noise preampfilier, but more recently a cryogenically cooled HEMT amplifier was used.  Dr. Croskey was a co-investigator on the Millimeter-wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS), which has flown three times on the Space Shuttle (Croskey et al., 1992b). The MAS uses a limb-sounding millimeter-wave radiometer (60 GHz, 183 GHz, 184 GHz, and 204 GHz) to map global distributions of water vapor, ozone, and chlorine monoxide. The Science Team for the MAS is drawn from the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy and University of Bremen in Germany, the Institute of Applied Physics in Germany, the Naval Research Laboratory, Embry-Riddle University, and Penn State University. Dr. Croskey's work was most directly involved in the Filter Electronics Box, which performed the spectral analysis of the received signals.  During development of this unit, Dr. Croskey directed three graduate and one undergraduate student, who helped in the design of the unit. Dr. Croskey has participated in IWGs, PDRs, CDRs, integration tests at  Kennedy Spaceflight Center, and launch support during the mission at the POCC in Huntsville, Alabama.  The last phase of the postmission data analysis has just been completed.

Dr. Croskey is affiliated with the Communications and Space Sciences Lab, SPIRIT, and Measurements of the Middle Atmosphere Lab.

List of Publications

Links

Communications and Space Sciences Laboratory (CSSL)

Measurements of the Middle Atmosphere Lab (M.O.M.A)