Prof. David Davidson
Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy and International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Prof Davidson’s distinguished lectures are on the following topics.
- "Designing Aperture Arrays for Radio Astronomy"
- "The SKA and Precursors: Extreme Antenna Engineering"
- "Interferometry 101: How Radio Telescopes Image the Sky"
- "Recent advances in Computational Electromagnetics (CEM): The Method of Manufactured Solutions for the Verification of CEM Codes"
Professor David Bruce Davidson is a Fellow of the IEEE. He received the B.Eng, B.Eng (Hons), and M.Eng degrees (all cum laude) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 1982, 1983, and 1986 respectively, and the Ph.D. and D.Eng. degrees from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in 1991 and 2017 respectively. From 1985 to 1988 he was with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa. From 1988 until 2017, he was with Stellenbosch University, South Africa; from 2011-17, he held the South African Research Chair in Electromagnetic Systems and EMI Mitigation for SKA there and was also a Distinguished Professor. As of 2018, he joined Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, where he is presently Engineering Director of the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, and holds the Chair of Radio Astronomy Engineering.
He has held a number of visiting appointments, including at the University of Arizona (1993); Cambridge University, UK (1997); Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (2003); and the University of Manchester, UK (2009).
Prof Davidson’s main research interest through most of his career has been computational electromagnetics (CEM) and its applications in RF and microwave engineering, and he has published extensively on this topic. He was also closely involved in the development of FEKO, a widely-used EM simulation tool. In recent years, his interests have expanded to include engineering electromagnetics for radio astronomy. He has authored around 250 technical journal articles and conference papers in the areas of computational electromagnetics, high-performance computing, antenna design, electromagnetic compatibility and radio astronomy. He is the author of "Computational Electromagnetics for RF and Microwave Engineering" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1st ed, 2005, 2nd ed., 2011), and he is a co-author of "Phased Arrays for Radio Astronomy, Remote Sensing, and Satellite Communications" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).
Prof. Davidson is registered as a Professional Engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa. He was a recipient of the South African FRD (now NRF) President’s Award in 1996. He received the Rector's Award for Excellent Research from Stellenbosch University in 2005. He received the inaugural IEEE-SAIEE Joint Distinguished Award for 2014. He has been actively involved with various IEEE activities; he served on the IEEE Antennas and Propagation AdCom (2011-'13); he was Chair of the local organizing committee of ICEAA’12-IEEE APWC-EEIS’12, held in Cape Town in September 2012; he was an associate editor of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine from 1999-2017, and is currently an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He served on the (South African) Astronomy Advisory Council from 2014-2017.