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David Davidson

Professor at Curtin University

About me

Professor David Davidson is currently acting discipline lead for Electrical and Computer Engineering at Curtin University. His professional career spans over almost 40 years, starting at the (South African) Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in 1984. He then moved to academia, joining Stellenbosch University in 1988. His research there focused on the development of computational electromagnetic (CEM) tools for RF and microwave engineering. This work continues to have both defence and commercial applications, and he contributed to the successful commercial software package FEKO. From its inception in 2005, he became increasingly involved with South Africa’s participation in the international Square Kilometre Array telescope project, and in 2011 became SKA Research Chair at Stellenbosch. At the end of 2017, he took early retirement from the SKA Chair and his position as Distinguished Professor at Stellenbosch University, and relocated to Australia, joining Curtin University. From 2018-2022, he served as the Director of Engineering at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, a joint centre between Curtin University and the University of Western Australia. He is the author of a widely cited book on computational electromagnetics, now in its 2nd edition, and co-author of text on phased arrays for radio astronomy and other applications. He has contributed to several book chapters. He has published around 80 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 160 papers at international conferences. In 2012 he was honoured by the IEEE as a Fellow “for contributions to computational electromagnetics”.