2018 Per Enge Early Achievement Award

Presented to: Dr. Seebany Datta-Barua

Citation: For outstanding contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of the ionosphere and its impacts on satellite-based
navigation integrity.

Dr. Seebany Datta-Barua is a rising star in both the ionospheric science and satellite navigation engineering communities. Scientific and engineering interests motivate her research, using satellite radio signals to sense and characterize ionospheric structure and dynamics and the latter on understanding the effects of the ionosphere on GNSS. While early in her career, she is widely recognized as a scientific authority on the structure and behavior of the ionosphere and its impacts on satellite-based radio-navigation systems.

Among Dr. Datta-Barua’s early contributions was the discovery that a disturbed ionosphere could produce differential range error gradients one hundred times larger than nominal, a critical finding, which instigated intense research activity for over a decade on the Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS). She was heavily involved in the development of the GBAS ionospheric threat model, which has since become an international standard.

Dr. Datta-Barua has published 18 peer-reviewed journal articles in a variety of influential journals, two book chapters, and more than 30 conference papers. She is an associate editor of Radio Science, the premier journal in the area of radio-frequency propagation and its applications.

Dr. Datta-Barua is a member of NASA’s Living with a Star Program Analysis Group and an Early Career Representative for the International Union of Radio Scientists (URSI). She has served multiple times as NSF review panelist; and has been a track chair and session chair at ION conferences. Dr. Datta-Barua has been advisor to four PhD students and two MS students. She has received widespread recognition for the quality of her research, including two Best-of-Session Awards from the ION, the MMAE Excellence in Research Award at Illinois Tech, and most notably, the highly coveted NSF CAREER Award.

Dr. Datta-Barua received her BS in physics, and MS and PhD degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, from Stanford University in 2008.