Recipient: Ms. Karen Van Dyke

Citation: For her continuous and dedicated contributions and recognized leadership in the field of satellite navigation. Specifically, for her pioneering efforts to develop and deploy a system to increase integrity monitoring of Global Positioning System (GPS) signals through the use of Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) and Fault Detection and Exclusion (FDE).


Ms. Karen Van Dyke is a member of the technical staff with the Center for Navigation at the U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe Center. Ms. Van Dyke has conducted availability and integrity monitoring studies for aviation applications of GPS for all phases of flight.

She has achieved outstanding success in translating her technical knowledge into real-world applications in the field of aviation. She was the project lead of a Volpe Center team that designed, developed, and implemented GPS RAIM outage reporting systems for both the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which are used to brief GPS availability to pilots during pre-flight planning. She currently is working with the FAA to develop prediction models for WAAS and LAAS to support the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) system. Ms. Van Dyke also has worked with Australian, German, and Chilean aviation authorities on the implementation of similar systems for use by pilots and air traffic control in these countries. Ms. Van Dyke recently was a member of a team that conducted a study for the Office of the Secretary of Transportation to identify and analyze GPS vulnerabilities and interference mitigation techniques for all modes of transportation. She is the recipient of the Award for Meritorious Achievement—the Silver Medal—from the Secretary of Transportation and the Superior Achievement Award—the Bronze Medal—from the DOT Research and Special Programs Administration. Ms. Van Dyke served as president of the Institute of Navigation from June 2000 to June 2001.


Recipient: Dr. James L. Garrison

Citation: For his contributions to the development of algorithms for satellite navigation in highly elliptical orbits, and the use of GPS reflections for remote sensing.


Dr. James L. Garrison has been an assistant professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., since August 2000. At Purdue, he introduced new research and course work in the applications of satellite navigation in collaboration with the Schools of Civil Engineering and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Prior to accepting a faculty position, he was a senior engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. At Goddard, he was the principal investigator on a research project to develop a GPS receiver capable of autonomous navigation in highly elliptical orbits. Dr. Garrison’s research on navigation in highly elliptical orbits brings together ideas from estimation theory, orbital mechanics, and receiver development. Dr. Garrison has made significant contributions in the area of algorithms for use in spaceborne receivers. He has investigated and implemented methods for weak signal tracking and for dealing with rapidly changing signal dynamics and large dynamic range to optimize the acquisition and tracking of satellites in geosynchronous and highly elliptical orbits. He has provided both technical and programmatic leadership in the development of the PiVoT receiver for these applications.

He began his NASA career at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in 1988. At Langley, he was the co-inventor of a technique for using ocean-reflected GPS signals as a bistatic radar for remote sensing, and first demonstrated the ability to measure ocean surface winds using this technique. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, an M.S. from Stanford University, and a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Garrison is the author and co-author of 10 peer-reviewed publications, and holds one U.S. patent for which he shares a NASA Exceptional Space Act Award. He has received recognition for excellence in the form of several NASA awards, best paper awards, and first prize in the GPS World Application’s Contest (1998).