Brief Resume

Thomas M. Crawford is an Optical Physicist and Electro-Optical Systems Engineer. He holds BS and MS degrees in physics and has completed all but his dissertation requirements for a PhD in Optical Physics. During Tom’s 39 year career, he has conducted research and development on various laser, optical, and electro-optical sensors and instrumentation. Tom has worked over 20 years in missile defense with experience on a number of major missile defense programs, and has served as the sensor/seeker lead on several of these programs. Tom also has 10 years experience as a principal investigator developing technologies to detect proliferation of nuclear weapons. Tom’s interdisciplinary background allows him to interface with other engineers from Systems, GNC, Propulsion, Opto-Mech, and other fields. He routinely writes numerical simulations and physics based models to conduct threat signature analysis, radiometry, EO sensor design, and plume-to-hardbody and discrimination analysis. He also uses his physics background to model trajectories and orbits, to calculate aero-thermal heating effects on domes and other surfaces, model hypervelocity collisions, and nuclear radiation effects. Tom has held positions at both DOE and NASA laboratories, as well as in private industry. He has 11 patents - 3 in missile defense (with another 3 pending), 4 related to an electro-optical high voltage sensing (currently used in the electrical power industry), 2 related to electro-optically sniffing chemicals, and 1 for measuring the losses of ultra-high reflectance mirrors (now also used for measuring weak absorption lines in chemical gases). Tom was awarded the 1998 R&D 100 Award by Research and Development Magazine for the electro-optic high voltage sensor mentioned above. Contact Tom for a detailed resume.