KU EECS Assistant Professor Receives International Recognition for Research in Radar Engineering
Patrick McCormick, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), was announced the recipient of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society’s (AESS) Fred Nathanson Memorial “Young Radar Engineer” Award for “advancements in waveform design and algorithms for radar and communications spectrum sharing.” The purpose of the award – which is sponsored by the IEEE Radar Systems Panel of AESS – is to grant international recognition for outstanding contributions to the radar art by individuals who are less than 40 years of age by the nomination deadline.
McCormick has made contributions to spectrum sharing by means of radar-communications co-design (via dual-function radar-communications waveform design) and spectral coexistence methods (via design of spatially and/or spectrally notched transmissions and interference mitigation). This body of work has been cultivated over a span of 9 years, a portion of which he spent at the Sensors Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Dayton, OH, and has resulted in multiple national and international awards including the IEEE AESS Robert T. Hill best dissertation award in 2018 and a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2023.
Because of his experience in the field of radar-communications, McCormick presented an invited talked entitled “Embedding Communications onto Radar Emissions: design methods, analysis, and experimentation” at the Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) Workshop held at the 2023 International Radar Conference in Sydney, Australia, and has offered a tutorial entitled “Efficient Spectral Access for Radar and Communications,” which has had significant interest from attendees of the IEEE Radar Conference and International Radar Conference series over the past four years. He also serves as the chair of the Spectral Innovations committee within the IEEE AESS Radar Systems Panel (RSP) and is a member of the AESS Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) technical working group within the RSP.
“It has been really fun seeing Patrick continue to progress into an outstanding leader in the radar research community,” says Shannon Blunt, center director of KU’s Radar Systems Laboratory (RSL). “He has made some significant novel technical contributions that really set the pace for innovations in the field, especially when it comes to experimental demonstration of new ideas regarding radar and communication spectrum sharing, which is a difficult and highly pertinent problem. Really looking forward to seeing what he does next!”
McCormick currently conducts research at RSL in the Institute for Information Sciences (I2S). RSL conducts research in radar and other electromagnetic/acoustic sensing problems, including advanced system concepts, radar image formation, adaptive radar signal processing, multi-function systems, real-time/cognitive sensing, radar waveform diversity and design, and radar modelling and simulation. Many RSL innovations have been incorporated into operational radar and sonar systems.