Keynote Speaker - C. Nils Smith

C. Nils Smith

Southwest Research Institute, US

Southwest Research Institute is an Independent, Not-for-Profit Applied Engineering Research and Development organization. Over 60% of it’s work is for the US Government, but a significant amount of it is for our international allies. That along with heavy involvement with IEEE and IEEE-USA as the Chair of the R&D Policy Committee gives Mr. Smith a unique perspective on issues affecting the international defense community.

In addition to shared adversaries, we also face shared challenges in availability of technologies (especially semiconductors), cybersecurity, pace of contracting, the modern technology update and fielding cycle, and the impacts of AI from defense against it to its responsible deployment. Mr. Smith will discuss these areas and their impact on our common defense. The best take away from this brief discuss is we continue to face many challenges but are in this together.

Mr. Smith has accumulated significant experience in the design, development, and testing of shipboard, land-based, and airborne Electronic Support systems and in the management and development of related projects and programs. His work has concentrated on the MF, HF, VHF, and UHF bands and has involved Adaptive Doppler, Simple Loop, Spaced Loop, Dipole Adcock, Quadrupole Adcock, Phase Sampled Interferometer, Phase Mode, Wullenweber, Vector Matching, and Adaptive Antenna Array Superresolution direction finding techniques and radiolocation techniques.
Mr. Smith has had extensive experience with military, ragged commercial and commercial design requirements and in project, program, and administrative management. His main technical emphasis has been in the area of direction finding antennas, beam-forming networks, and RF system design and analysis. Mr. Smith has promoted, developed, and managed programs for U.S. and foreign governments as well as U.S. and foreign commercial organizations. His experience includes management of multi-million-dollar programs and acting as the Principal Investigator for SwRI- sponsored Internal Research projects. He has managed programs involving analysis, research, development, production, testing, consulting, training, and field services. He also led numerous QRC efforts. He is experienced with cost/schedule status control systems and other modern project management techniques involving technical performance, fiscal, schedule, personnel, documentation, logistics, reliability, maintainability, and security. Mr. Smith has also served as an instructor and course administrator for courses in Signal Exploitation and Geolocation, Radio Direction Finding, and RF Systems Engineering. He is also experienced with ISO-9001, AS9100, and CMMI for Development quality management systems and NIST 800-171 and CMMC compliance.
Mr. Smith was selected as the Engineering Manager of the Year by the Engineering Management Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for 2006. He was also awarded the Dixie Crow Stanley B. Hall Executive Management Award in 2020 and Dixie Crow Anton D. “Tony” Brees Lifetime Service Award.
He earned Certificates in Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Marketing, and Strategic Decision and Risk Management from the UT Austin McCombs School of Business.
Mr. Smith serves on Advisory Boards/Councils for Trinity University in Engineering Science and the UTSA in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also serves on the BSA Alamo Area Council Executive Board, the Westside Family YMCA Board, SOSA Advisory Board, and the JBSA 5G Steering Committee. He is currently the Chair of the IEEE LSS TEMS Chapter and the IEEE-USA R&D Policy Committee and is the Past Chair of the IEEE Lone Star Section and Vice Chair of the IEEE LSS Government Relations Committee. Mr. Smith also serves as the Treasurer for the IEEE LSS Technology & Engineering Management Chapter and has been Technical Co-Chair multiple times for the IEEE/AIAA Digital Avionics Systems Conference.