Peter S. Gural,
S.A.I.C.
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Brief Biographical Information:
Received an MS degree in Astronomy from graduate work at the University of
Arizona studying mass loss in red giant stars. Moved into the scientific
programming and simulation arena working for Computer Sciences Corp, ENSCO,
and Physical Dynamics on satellite onboard orbit determination, ocean wave
spectral modeling, adaptive processing, and non-acoustic ASW. Joined
Science Applications International Corp in 1985 working on underwater
acoustics, hull modeling, and modal analysis. In recent years in support of
a SETA contract with DARPA's Sensor Technology Office has been involved in
pulse-doppler radar performance analysis, clutter modeling, and the
development of the Dual-Polarization Adaptive Seeker Model used by various
government contractors and agencies.
Research:
As part of the Canadian/USAF team of researchers in Mongolia/Australia
during the 1998 Leonids, provided the first remotely fielded automated
meteor counting system used for reporting meteor flux rates from the storm.
As an independent consultant, MeteorScan was developed and hosted on a
Macintosh G3 computer designed to process night sky video imagery in real
time, detecting transient linear tracks (meteors) of less than one second
duration. The algorithm included a localized Hough transform to narrow the
number of MLE hypotheses for detection, associating each track to a specific
meteor shower radiant.
Research on Leonid MAC:
Real-time meteor detection
Under an SAIC contract to the SETI Institute and the University of Western
Ontario, the MeteorScan software has been upgraded to support both the air
and ground based campaigns for the 1999 Leonid storm. Mr Gural will be
onsite in La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain supporting six remote automated
meteor counting stations employing MeteorScan as well as enhancing the
software to provide directional cues for the airborne instrumentation.
Gural also developed a new AIM-IT technology for tracking of meteors.
Research on Hyperseed MAC:
Deployment of a new AIM-IT technology to detect and track meteors for optical spectroscopy, in an experiment with Peter Jenniskens.
