A junior faculty specializing in radar and lidar remote sensing of the upper atmosphere is supported with salary and with a portion of start-up funds from University resources. The new faculty position replaces slight erosion in the Space Science Faculty at Pennsylvania State University during a time when new community initiatives in the Space Weather program and with the AMISR radar require new intellectual capital. This faculty augmentation strengthens the Communication and Space Science Laboratory (CSSL) within the Electrical Engineering Department at Penn State, and solidifies the new University-wide Center For Space Science Research (CSRP). Educational and Public outreach is facilitated by the Pennsylvania State Grant Consortium that organizes outreach in the Space Sciences for grades K-12 through Graduate students. Including curriculum development consistent with the expertise of the faculty candidate, the Pennsylvania State curriculum is expanded to include training of science teachers and proposal preparation training.
In September 2006, Dr. Urbina joined the department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University as an Assistant Professor under the National Science Foundation Faculty Development Grant on Space Sciences. Dr. Urbina’s research at Penn State University has been focused on developing radar systems using open source hardware and software tools, which includes a prototype of the next generation of meteor radars with an improved ability for deriving neutral winds, temperatures, individual meteor properties, and a more accurate characterization of the global meteor flux and its effect on upper atmospheric physics, and space weather. His research on open source instrumentation can easily be extendable to heterogeneous sensor arrays and make practical and thus scientifically viable the development of distributed array of small instruments, and consequently enable the system science concept to study the Earth’s middle and upper atmosphere. Dr. Urbina has established a new radio observatory at Ag Progress, near gate L, at Rock Springs, PA. The goal of this new facility is to provide research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students in space sciences and communication, space-weather, and the development of ground and spacecraft instrumentation. Dr. Urbina has also developed and established a passive radar system near the Peruvian Andes to study plasma instabilities that interrupt satellite and space communications. Dr. Urbina was granted tenure and promotion in the Department of Electrical Engineering, effective July 1, 2012.
