Colloquia Topic and Speaker Bio 


Professor Ian McNab

Abstract: 

The storage of electrical energy, and its delivery as power pulses, plays an important and growing role in many Navy applications. These include stabilization of electrical grids and high-power sources for radars, lasers, microwaves, electromagnetic launch of aircraft or missiles, and railguns. Navy requirements are at sea, land, air, space, under sea, and for expeditionary forces, some of which in common with Army, Air Force, and Space Command missions.

Bio:

Ian R. McNab is a Research Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He received his B.Sc. (Hons., Physics) from the University of Leeds (UK) in 1960 and his Ph.D. on magnetoplasmadynamics from the University of Reading (UK) in 1974. He has authored over 150 scientific papers on pulsed power, electric guns, rotating machines, current collection, and plasma- and magnetofluid dynamics. He has been a member of the Steering Committee of the International EM Launcher Symposia since 1982, was a member of the IEEE Plasma Sciences and Nuclear Committee for nine years and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He was the recipient of the Peter Mark Medal from the EML Symposium in 1990, the Lavrentyev Medal from the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2003, and the IEEE Erwin Marx Medal in 2013.

From 1960-75 he was a research scientist at the Nuclear Research Center and International Research and Development Company in Newcastle, England. From 1975-1983 at the Westinghouse Research Center in Pittsburgh, PA. From 1984-1990 for the Westinghouse Marine Division in Sunnyvale, CA. From 1990-94 for Maxwell Laboratories in San Diego, CA. From 1995-2013 for the Institute for Advanced Technology (an Army UARC) at the University of Texas in Austin, where he retired as Acting Director. And for Navy Contractors from 2014-2017 before joining NPS in 2018.