Radionavigation lab alum Dr. Zak Kassas will join the Electrical Engineering Department at The University of California, Riverside (UCR) in the Fall 2014 Quarter as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Kassas’ Ph.D. focused on studying a novel navigation paradigm termed collaborative opportunistic navigation (COpNav). COpNav aims to exploit the plenitude of ambient radio frequency signals of opportunity in the environment (e.g., cellular phone, HDTV, AM/FM, etc) to enable navigation in GNSS-challenged environments, such as indoors, deep urban canyons, and environments under malicious attacks (e.g., jamming and spoofing). Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., Dr. Kassas was a Research & Development Engineer with the Control Design & Dynamical Systems Simulation group at National Instruments Corp. and an Adjunct Professor at Texas State University. Dr. Kassas is a senior member of the IEEE, has published more than twenty refereed journal and conference articles and a book chapter, and holds one U.S. patent. Dr. Kassas’ research at UCR will span the areas of estimation, navigation, autonomous vehicles, and intelligent transportation systems.
Dr. Kassas recently held a seminar targeted at Ph.D. students and postdocs with academic career aspirations to share his advice on landing a faculty position.
