Dr. Robert W. McMillan has been a Prometheus Principal Scientist since 2012.
Bob has extensive experience in building lasers and performing research on
laser materials. While at Martin Marietta Aerospace in the 70s, he completed
his Ph.D. research on energy levels in yttrium aluminum garnet doped with
chromium, work published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America. He
worked on erbium laser materials including both Er:glass and Er:YAG, and built
a flashlamp-pumped Er:YAG laser for the US Army Atmospheric Sciences
Laboratory. His final task with Martin before leaving in 1976 was
responsibility for developing a high-performance Nd:YAG laser for a laser
designator pod for the French Mirage fighter jet. While at Georgia Tech he
worked on optically-pumped halide lasers and discovered several new laser
transitions. He was also responsible for building and delivering millimeter
wave radar systems at 94 and 140 GHz to the Army Missile Command and for
building and delivering a pulsed coherent 225 GHz laser to the Army Night
Vision Laboratory. While at Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, NY, he and
colleagues did seminal work on concealed weapon detection, which has resulted
in the development of the microwave scanning imagers common in airports today.
While working for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, he organized the
National Radar Conference in Huntsville, AL and proposed, won, and directed a
JIEDDO program tasked with fusing disparate sensors to detect improvised
explosive devices. Bob was the recipient of an Outstanding Performance in
Research Award from The Georgia Tech Research Institute in 1984, a Meritorious
Presidential Rank Award in 2005, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award
from Marquis Who's Who in 2020. He has remained active since retiring in 2011
from the Government by publishing several papers on statistically combining
disparate probability distribution functions relevant for radar and
communications systems. A paper on this topic was given in November 2017 in
Tel Aviv, and a more extensive follow-up paper for submission to a journal is
in preparation. Bob is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers, a Senior Member of the Optical Society of America, and a
Senior Member of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.
