Professor David Davidson

NAME AND CURRENT POSITION
Professor David Bruce Davidson, DEng, CPEng (Aus), FIEEE
Interim Discipline Lead, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University
QUALIFICATIONS
DEng, Stellenbosch University, 2017
PhD, Stellenbosch University, 1991
MEng, BEng (Hons), & BEng, University of Pretoria, 1986, 1983 and 1982 respectively.
BIOGRAPHY
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 at Stellenbosch University; he was also a Distinguished Professor there and is presently Professor Extraordinary. As of 2018, he joined Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. 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).  He is a Chartered Professional Engineer with Engineers Australia. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
RESEARCH KEYWORDS
Computational electromagnetics, antennas, radio astronomy instrumentation, Square Kilometre Array.
RESEARCH PROGRAM
David Davidson led the engineering team at the Curtin node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) from 2018-2022. Their work was heavily focussed on the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, as well as the Murchison Widefield Array SKA precursor.  The research program encompassed antenna design, computational electromagnetic simulation and metrology; radio frequency front ends; digital back-ends; instrument calibration; and interferometry. David continues to work on electromagnetic simulation of the SKA-Low telescope.

Preceding his work in radio astronomy, David worked extensively in computational electromagnetics and contributed to commercial software.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

1. D.B. Davidson, K.F.Warnick, “Contemporary Array Analysis Using Embedded Element Patterns” in “Antenna and Array Technologies for Future Wireless Ecosystems”, eds. J. Gao and R.W. Ziolkowski, Wiley-IEEE Press, July 2022, doi.org/10.1002/9781119813910.ch8.
2. Pietro Bolli, David B. Davidson, Mirko Bercigli, Paola Di Ninni, Maria Grazia Labate, Daniel Ung, Giuseppe Virone, “Computational electromagnetics for the SKA-Low prototype station AAVS2” J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst. 8(1), 011017 (January — March 2022), doi: 10.1117/1.JATIS.8.1.011017.
3. D. B. Davidson, “Convergence of the MPIE Galerkin MoM Thin Wire Formulation,” in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 69, no. 10, pp. 7073-7078, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TAP.2021.3076520.
4. K. F. Warnick, D. B. Davidson and D. Buck, “Embedded Element Pattern Loading Condition Transformations for Phased Array Modeling” in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 1769-1774, March 2021, doi: 10.1109/TAP.2020.3027593.
5. F. Warnick, R. Maaskant, M.V. Ivashina, D.B. Davidson, B.D. Jeffs, “Phased Arrays for Radio Astronomy, Remote Sensing, and Satellite Communications”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. 2018. ISBN: 9781108423922
6. B.Davidson, “Computational Electromagnetics for RF and Microwave Engineering”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. 1st edition, 2005; 2nd edition, 2011.

SELECTED AWARDS

• IEEE-SAIEE Joint Distinguished Award for 2014.
• Fellow of the IEEE, 2012.
• Rector’s Award for Excellent Research, Stellenbosch University, 2005.
• South African FRD (now NRF) President’s Award. 1996.