Speaker: Ms. Kathy M. Bowland, Research Engineer II and Dr. Nelson E. Lourenco, Research Engineer II, Advanced Concepts Laboratory - GTRI

Seminar Topic: MicroNimbus: A Spaceborne mm-Wave Temperature Profilometer for the Earth’s Atmosphere    

Abstract of Talk:
MicroNimbus is a 3U CubeSat spacecraft, which utilizes a novel silicon germanium, single-chip (i.e., SiGe MMIC) radiometer to measure the temperature profile of the Earth’s atmosphere. By choosing different center frequencies and bandwidths, MicroNimbus can selectively target different regions within the 60 GHz oxygen absorption spectrum, thereby compiling the atmospheric temperature at various altitudes into a temperature profile. This capability is of interest to weather forecasters/researchers in LIDAR and laser communications, among others. The CubeSat’s low cost would allow for a constellation of spacecraft to be deployed, yielding a continuous near-real-time 3-D temperature profile map of the Earth’s atmosphere. MicroNimbus represents a three-year collaboration with the Georgia Tech AE and ECE departments. The MicroNimbus spacecraft can provide atmospheric temperature profile data at an altitude resolution of 10 km, a geographic resolution of 0.5° long/lat, and a temperature resolution of 2 Kelvin RMS.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Kathy Bowland is a Research Engineer with a focus on antennas and electromagnetic systems. She received her B.S. from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and M.S. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She worked in industry for approximately 4 years supporting RF signal generator designs before joining GTRI in February 2016. As an undergraduate, Ms. Bowland focused on electromagnetic and RF studies, with an internship at Oak Ridge National Labs’ Spallation Neutron Source. She continued her research in electromagnetics in graduate school, with the support of her advisor Jennifer Bernhard, with an investigation into cylindrical surface waveguides.

Nelson Lourenco received the B.S., M.S., and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2009, 2012, and 2016, respectively. Nelson was a research assistant in Prof. John D. Cressler’s silicon-germanium (SiGe) Devices and Circuits Group at Georgia Tech., where his PhD research focused on investigating the transient radiation phenomena within SiGe technologies using heavy-ion and advanced laser techniques for the development of radiation-hardened systems intended for orbital and space environments. He is currently a research engineer with the Space Systems Program Office in GTRI’s Advanced Concepts Laboratory and an adjunct assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Nelson has authored/co-authored over 52 refereed journal and conference publications to date, and he is a frequent reviewer of journals and conference proceedings. Nelson was awarded the 2014 IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference Outstanding Student Paper Award, 2015 NPSS Graduate Scholarship Award, 2016 Roger P. Webb ECE GRA Excellence Award, and the 2017 Sigma Xi Best PhD Thesis Award for his research contributions to radiation effects in silicon-based heterojunction integrated circuit platforms. Nelson also spent time as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, a division of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Sagamihara, Japan under NSF’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship.