Thomas Pratt

Biography

Dr. Pratt is a Research Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in July 2008 after 23 years as a research engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). His research revolves around multi-port radio frequency systems, especially in physical layer issues such as system architectures, signal design, signal propagation, and multi-port signal processing at both the transmitter and the receiver. Principle applications include radar, wireless communications, electronic warfare, and remote sensing. 

Dr. Pratt supervises a team of three full-time research engineers, a part-time research scientist, a post-doctoral researcher, a full-time admin/research assistant and advises a Ph.D. student. Since 2010, he has garnered over $18M in research and equipment funding for his research group. Two small business start-ups have been formed based on his technology: one in cybersecurity and another in remote vital signs monitoring. He has supervised the build-up of testbed and demonstration systems, including for ground penetrating radar, emitter geolocation networks, wideband interference suppression, adaptive space-polarization MIMO communications, MIMO channel sounding, secure communications, and emitter signal classification. He has also supervised the development of multiple prototype systems, including a 2x2 dual-polarized MIMO radar, a multi-band PMD sensor, a noncontact distributed sensor array for gas turbine engine health monitoring, and an RF signal classification system based on multi-port characterizations. He has also acquired and supervised the build-up of a pair of world-class mobile field research vehicles to support wireless research.

Dr. Pratt's research reaches across multiple disciplines, including radar, electronic warfare, wireless communications, remote sensing, optical fiber communications, power-line communications, vibrometry, geolocation, aerospace, atmospheric sciences, and medical science.