joe kovalik

senior engineer

About

I am currently working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Free Space Optical Communications. The goal is to augment radio communication links with lasers. This should increase bandwidth while at the same time reduce the size weight and power requirements of the communications system. I have worked on many aspects of optical communications but my main interest is to design, prototype and validate complete end to end systems in a short period of time. My background is experimental phsycis so I am familiar with many different fields of engineering and feel comfortable in a multi-disciplinary project. I also have interests in an energy harvesting company, WisePower Corporation, and its parent company WisePower Italia, srl based in Perugia, Italy. This corporation has proprietary techniques to optimize energy extraction from the environmental background by using non linear spectral analysis. WisePower Italia has access to an excellent university team that can meet the design, prototype and test energy harvesting equipment.

Country

united states

City

arcadia

Industry

defense & space

Skill

fluent in italian and french

Experience

scientist

caltech

1999-9 - 2003-9 · 4 yrs 1 mo

Involved in all the aspects of commissioning the LIGO detector. Responsible for the operation of the laser, various control systems and measurement of detector performance. Trained technical staff and students and produced tutorial materials. Prepared and presented seminars to both technical and non-technical audiences.

researcher

infn

1995-3 - 1999-9 · 4 yrs 7 mos

Responsible for establishing various facilities to make precision measurements of low loss materials and creep in mechanical systems by using interferometric and other optical and electronic techniques. This included modeling, designing and fabricating experimental facilities and then analyzing the data produced.

senior engineer

nasa jet propulsion laboratory

2003-9 - Present · 23 yrs 1 mo

Developed telescope system controls and monitor and control including telemetry exchange over mission network for a lunar to ground optical communications link. Developed and tested a laser ranging and tracking system that can achieve sub millimeter resolution for moving targets at multi kilometer distances. Developed and tested bi directional free space optical communications systems for kilometer to thousand kilometer ranges with autonomous acquisition and tracking capability and data rates up to 10 Gbps. Developed bi-photon absolute photo-detector calibration system. Developed control system for high speed Mach Zender modulator. Designed optical assembly for 800W deep space laser uplink. Characterized photon counting detectors for low signal level optical communications links. Performed link analysis for free space optical communications satellite network.

Education

caltech

physics

1982-1 - 1986-1 · 4 yrs 1 mo

massachusetts institute of technology

physics

1986-1 - 1994-1 · 8 yrs 1 mo

Worked on understanding the thermal noise limits of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity Wave Observatory) interferometer both experimentally and theoretically. The major part of my doctoral thesis involved designing and building a special purpose, high sensitivity laser interferometer to measure mechanical noise sources that are ten million times smaller than the size of an atom. The measured noise level was 2x10-17 m/Hz1/2 at frequencies from 500 Hz to 20 kHz which was a record measurement at the time."]