VT SuperDARN student Paul Kennedy successfully defended his M.Sc. thesis on Friday, May 3 to an examining committee of four professors. Paul was advised on his thesis work by Drs. Mike Ruohoniemi and Jo Baker and has worked closely with other faculty members (Dr. Greg Earle, Dr. Bob McGwier, and Mr. Kevin Sterne). The title of his thesis is 'Design of Software Defined Radio for SuperDARN Radars'. Paul designed and built a receiver system based on Red Pitaya software designed radio and succesfully collected data with it using the interferometer array of the Blackstone radar. Paul is a repeat awardee of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (high school - undergraduate - graduate), has interned at MIT Lincoln Laboartory, and has distinguished himself in the field during working trips to several SuperDARN radars. He is planning to take up a position in research at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory this summer.

Congratulations, Paul!

(Photo credit: Dr. Xueling Shi)