James E. Hubbard Jr.

Class of 2017-18

University of Maryland
National Academy of Engineering
Lifetime Achievement Award Society of Photonics and Instrumentation Engineers

Unmanned vehicles that can perform tasks autonomously could be used as robotic platforms in the air and on the ground to conduct the dull, dirty, and often dangerous tasks that put humans at risk of injury. Such tasks include crop surveys, atmospheric data collection, search-and-rescue missions, wildfire fighting, and border patrol operations. To that end, James E. Hubbard Jr. and his team are working to design, develop, and define the state of the art in that field.

Hubbard received his doctorate in mechanical engineering in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hubbard’s previous appointments include the MIT faculty, the Charles Stark Draper, Optron Systems Inc., and the Photonics Center at Boston University. Hubbard co-founded PhotoSense Inc. and iProvica Inc.

He is known internationally for his work in aeroacoustics for noise control, adaptive structures, spatially distributed transducers, and the extension of modem time domain control methodologies into the spatial domain for the real-time control of distributed systems.

Hubbard is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a senior member of the International Society for Optical Engineering.

Honors include the Smart Structures Product Innovation Award from the International Society for Optical Engineering (1999); Black Engineer of the Year (2002) from the Career Communications Group; Best Paper in Structures Award from the Adaptive Structures and Material Systems branch, Aerospace Division, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2015); and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Photonics and Instrumentation Engineers (2016).

He has published three books and ninety-six articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has been awarded twenty-four patents.

As a Faculty Fellow, Hubbard will collaborate with faculty and students in the College of Engineering and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Students

Tristan Griffith – 2019-20

Zaryab Shahid – 2019-20