TODD WALTER FINISHING TERM AS PRESIDENT OF ION COUNCIL

Aero/Astro Senior Research Engineer Todd Walter is completing his two-year term as president of the ION Council. The Council acts as the board of directors for ION, the Institute of Navigation.

ION describes itself as the world's leading professional organization for the advancement of positioning, navigation, and timing. Founded in 1945, its worldwide membership draws those interested in air, space, and marine navigation as well as position determination.

Dr. Walter has played a key role in ION over the years, including Western Regional Vice President and serving as program chair and then general chair of ION'S Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) conference, attended by about 2,000 professionals from around the world.

At Stanford, Dr. Walter works in the GPS lab. His research focuses on monitoring the integrity of GNSS satellite signals. Many of the methods that he has developed have been implemented in the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). WAAS now serves nearly 4,000 approach procedures in the United States, far more than any other navigation system. In particular, Dr. Walter's research has emphasized monitoring the ionosphere to ensure that its effects cannot cause erroneous position estimates at the aircraft. Dr. Walter continues to work with the FAA on improving WAAS performance.

For his work, Dr. Walter has received two prestigious awards from ION. In 2008, he received the Thurlow Award from ION's Institute of Navigation in recognition of outstanding contributions to the science of navigation. He is the fourth person from Stanford Aero/Astro to win the Thurlow Award, joining Prof. Per Enge (1996), head of the GPS lab, and Emeriti Profs. Brad Parkinson (1986) and Dan DeBra (1982). In 2010, he received the Kepler Award from ION's Satellite Division for his "contributions to space-based augmentation systems and the education of the next generation of navigation engineers." Previous Stanford Aero/Astro recipients of this award were Profs. Enge (2000) and Parkinson (1991).

Dr. Walter received his B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford.