Joseph Baker named Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Joseph Baker, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been named the Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow of Electrical and Computer Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellowship was established in memory of the late Steven O. Lane, a 1978 graduate of Virginia Tech who was considered to be a leader in spacecraft antenna design. He spent his entire professional career with Boeing Satellite Systems; among his many accomplishments were 12 patents and several professional papers. The fellowship is presented to a junior faculty member for teaching and research excellence.
Baker joined the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2008 as a tenure-track assistant professor after spending 2001 to 2008 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. At Johns Hopkins, he was a member of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) team.
Baker came to Virginia Tech when the SuperDARN team moved from Johns Hopkins to Virginia Tech so the program could be embedded in an academic environment that integrates research and education.
Baker receives among the highest teaching ratings in his department, even though he teaches difficult material in the two-semester undergraduate electromagnetic fields sequence required of all electrical engineering students.
An active researcher, he has published six journal articles since joining Virginia Tech. He is a co-principal investigator of a $2.3 million award and a $1.9 million award from the National Science Foundation for the SuperDARN project, and co-principal investigator of another $2.6 million award for major instrument development.
Baker received his Ph.D. in atmospheric and space sciences from the University of Michigan in 2001. He received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of New England (Australia) in 1992.
