William Blair Biography

William Dale Blair is a principal research engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). He received the BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Tennessee Technological University in 1985 and 1987. In January 1998, he received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia , where his research focused on monopulse processing for tracking unresolved targets. While a graduate research assistant, Dr. Blair performed robotic controls research for the Center of Excellence of Manufacturing Research and Technology Utilization at Tennessee Technological University . In 1987, he joined the Naval Systems Division of FMC Corporation in Dahlgren , Virginia as an electrical engineer, where his work involved the development and evaluation of new algorithms for weapons control. In 1990, Dr. Blair joined the Naval Surface Warfare Center , Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) in Dahlgren , Virginia . At NSWCDD, he originated two benchmark problems for target tracking and radar resource allocation, which served as themes for invited sessions at the 1994 and 1995 American Control Conferences. He also led a project that demonstrated through a real-time tracking experiment that modern tracking algorithms can be utilized to reduce the radar time and energy required by a phased array radar to support surveillance tracking. Since joining GTRI in 1997, Dr. Blair has led a multiorganizational team in the development of multiplatform-multisensor-multitarget benchmarks to both air defense and ballistic missile defense. The BMD Benchmark serves as the modeling and simulation tool for development and assessment of the tracking algorithms for the United States ' Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). Dr. Blair is also responsible for coordination of the testing of the tracking processing algorithms for the missile defense system and the BMD Benchmark is critical element of that testing.

Dr. Blair served as the Editor for Radar System for IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (T-AES) 1996-99 and Editor-In-Chief (EIC) for IEEE T-AES from 1999-2005. He has served as a reviewer for the IEEE T-AES, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, American Control Conference, and IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. Dr. Blair is an IEEE Fellow and served on the Board of Governors of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) from 1998-2003 and 2005-07. He received technical awards that include 2001 IEEE Young Radar Engineer of the Year, an NSWCDD Technical Excellence Award in 1991 for his contributions to the development of innovative techniques for target trajectory estimation and prediction and the NSWCDD Independent Exploratory Development Excellence Award in 1993. Dr. Blair's research interests include radar signal processing and control, resource allocation for multifunction radars, multisensor resource allocation, tracking maneuvering targets, and multisensor integration and data fusion. Dr. Blair's research is reported in over one hundred publications. He served as a lecturer in 1993, 1994, and 1998 for the UCLA Extension Program in three short courses related to advanced topics in target tracking. He recently originated and coordinates two short courses, Target Tracking in Sensor Systems and Target Tracking Concepts, for the Profession Education Department of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Blair is coeditor and coauthor of the book, Multitarget-Multisensor Tracking: Advances and Applications III. He was also co-organizer for invited sessions at the American Control Conferences in 1993, 1994, and 1995. He is also the host and coordinator of the ONR/GTRI Workshop on Target Tracking and Sensor Fusion for 1998 through 2006. Dr. Blair is a member of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, IEEE Education Society, Tau Beta Pi, Etu Kappa Nu, and Phi Kappa Phi.