2008 Fellow

Presented to: Mr. Marvin B. May

Citation: For his many significant contributions in the fields of geophysical navigation, inertial navigation, and GPS that have significantly advanced military capabilities and his service to the community as an educator in the field of navigation.

Mr. Marvin B. May is recognized by the navigation community as an expert in geophysical navigation. His contributions date back to the earliest applications of gravity and bathymetry. In addition to gravity and bathymetry, Mr. May also has strong expertise in GPS. From 1987-1996, Mr. May was the chief analyst of the GPS Division for the Navy's GPS Central Engineering Activity which was responsible for analysis and integration of GPS on numerous DoD platforms. He led the team that specified and tested the first military embedded GPS Inertial Navigation Assembly (GINA) and was the project engineer and innovator for the Simulated Inertial GPS Navigation Laboratory (SIGNaL) concept.

Mr. May has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the CCNY, a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from NYU, and courses towards a DEE degree at Polytechnic Institute of New York. He also is a registered Professional Engineer. Throughout most of his career, Mr. May has provided education and training at both the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as through short courses that cover a large diversity of topics. He developed and taught Master's degree navigation courses at Wilkes University and also managed Penn State Applied Research Laboratory's (ARL) Navigation Education Program.

Mr. May's navigation service includes over 30 years as an ION member. He has held numerous offices in the Philadelphia Section. He has also served at the national level as the Eastern Region Council member. Since 1997 he has served as the original historian of the ION. In this capacity he has written over 25 articles on navigation history for ION's Newsletter. His service has included participation on the Defense Science Board Subcommittee for GPS Jamming, the Navy's Research Advisory Committee for NAVWAR as well as serving as a member of the Navigator of the Navy's Subject Matter Expert team. He has been a session chair for numerous navigation symposiums, and has written or co-authored over 25 papers for navigation symposium proceedings. He is a recipient of the ION's Weems Award.