2018 Excellence in Research Prize and Medal Recipient
Dale Gary, Ph.D. joined the faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1997, where he is now a distinguished professor in the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, in the Department of Physics. Gary is also Director of the Owens Valley Solar Array radio facility near Big Pine, California. His research involves the study of the basic physical processes occurring on the Sun that produce radio emission, and what that can tell us about the acceleration of particles to high energies in solar flares. Gary is also an expert in radio interferometry instrumentation and techniques and serves in an advisory capacity for several radio facilities around the world.
Gary has been a leader in the use of solar radio data for examining the conditions under which radio bursts associated with solar flares can disturb or disrupt entirely cellular telephone signals emanating from cell tower sites. He was involved in the discovery that such bursts also cause failures in Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which can affect GPS location services over the entire sunlit hemisphere of Earth. His research is essential to understanding and mitigating the conditions under which such deleterious effects of solar events can occur.
Gary is the author of more than 140 articles in scholarly journals. He was recently elected vice chair of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society. He received his Ph.D. in astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado.