50 GNSS Leaders to Watch

May 1, 2009 By: GPS World Staff GPS World

Meeting GNSS Challenges 2009-2010

Jan Skaloud
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Jan Skaloud

"Scan2map, the real-time airborne laser scanning method developed by our team, creates terrain models with sub-decimeter accuracy directly in flight, while indicating their quality per each point on a 3D grid. This creates economic advantages for the mapping industry and opens doors to new monitoring applications. My long-time passion, high-level sports performance assessment, will use body-worn GNSS/integrated sensors as a daily tool. The Winter Olympics in Vancouver will prove that."

Jan Skaloud

Douglas S. Taggart
President | Overlook Systems Technologies, Inc.

Douglas S. Taggart

"A little more than a decade ago, GPS was labeled as the next great utility. In hindsight that vision was shortsighted. The real benefit of GPS as a source of global positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) data is not in being a standalone system, but in driving innovation in the way PNT information is fused into other devices and systems. My short-term motivation is to provide career opportunities for our nation's young engineers so they can contribute to meeting the long-term vision."

Lt Col David B. Goldstein
Chief Engineer | GPS Wing, U.S. Air Force

Lt Col David B. Goldstein

"I have the privilege of overseeing development, integration, and verification of requirements and interfaces, and securing international agreements to ensure current and future GNSS signals are compatible, interoperable, and potentially interchangeable. Our challenge is to maintain a strong technical baseline that ensures backward compatibility while at the same time forging growing capabilities. We do this while launching the last IIR-M satellite, beginning launch of IIFs, acquiring next-generation GPS IIIAs, finishing the Architecture Evolution Plan, awarding a next-generation control segment contract, delivering current user equipment, and building a solid next-generation user equipment strategy."

Grace Xingxin Gao
Research Associate | The GPS Laboratory, Stanford University

Grace Xingxin Gao

"As more and more people come to rely on GNSS, it is vital to maintain system integrity. We endeavor to make sure GNSS is not just working but working well. I will focus on integrity, specifically monitoring satellite performance, capturing satellite anomalies, and measuring and bounding the errors associated with the satellites. I also look forward to future development of the Galileo and Compass systems, and the launches of the GPS satellites with L5 payload."

Frédéric Bastide
European Commission (Galileo Unit - DG TREN)

Frédéric Bastide

"I will continue work on the technical design of Galileo and EGNOS systems, and on international coordination, helping both systems be attractive and competitive. All the new GNSS offer opportunities for bilateral and multilateral cooperation that I will bolster by seeking to improve interoperability, for instance. There are also compatibility issues that I will continue to address, and which benefit the whole GNSS community."