William Radasky began his scientific and engineering career in 1968 at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) in Albuquerque, New Mexico as an Air Force Officer. He worked with the early high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) codes, which calculate the EMP environments on the ground due to a nuclear burst at high altitudes. He published several reports dealing with the HEMP environments produced during atmospheric tests performed by the United States in the Pacific. In addition, he was a co-author of the EMP Phenomenology Handbook published by AFWL in 1972, which documented the early work in the field.  From 1972 through 1975, he worked for Mission Research Corporation (MRC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico and subsequently in Santa Barbara, California.  He worked on a variety of EMP phenomenology, system assessment and protection projects dealing with nuclear bursts at all altitudes, and with systems such as Sanguine, Safeguard, Minuteman, among others. In addition, he participated in the development of early source region EMP (SREMP) experiments designed to validate the accuracy of the newly designed computer codes. It was at MRC that Merewether and Radasky published the first application of the finite difference computational method in 2-D for simultaneously performing an EMP environment and coupling computation in a time-dependent ionized media.

After consulting from 1975-1977, he joined JAYCOR in 1977 as a Division Vice President, opening and managing the Santa Barbara office. He continued his work advancing the state of the art of EMP phenomenology and systems applications. He was very active in vulnerability studies performed to advise the Air Force on the risks of various MX missile-basing modes due to the effects of EMP. In addition he led standardization efforts to define the high-altitude EMP environment waveforms for aircraft and other DoD applications (MIL-STD-2169). In addition he developed the current injection levels for time-urgent C4I systems (MIL-STD-188-125). He also participated in and managed several large-scale analysis-verification experiments that established the accuracy of SREMP environment and coupling models and codes.

In 1984, Dr. Radasky founded a new company, Metatech Corporation, in Goleta, California (Santa Barbara County) where he is President and Managing Engineer. At Metatech, Dr. Radasky has managed the development of a series of user-friendly EMP codes that can compute the EMP environments and coupling for a range of burst altitudes to be used by analysts to evaluate the threats to their systems. He has also worked on a variety of military and commercial systems (aircraft, army combat vehicles, ICBMs and ABM systems, communications facilities, etc.) to develop electromagnetic hardening measures and test methods to verify the performance of those measures. In addition, he contributed to studies performed by the Metatech Applied Power Solutions Division to evaluate threats and design solutions to prevent the loss of transmission power grid stability due to the effects of geomagnetic storms and HEMP. As part of this work, he has obtained experience concerning the power system infrastructure and its vulnerability to electromagnetic threats. In addition he was the program manager for Metatech’s studies performed for the U.S. Congressional EMP Commission, which focused on the threat of HEMP to the U.S. critical infrastructures.

Dr. Radasky has also been actively involved in the development of commercial electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in Geneva, Switzerland to protect commercial systems from all types of electromagnetic threats, including those from the high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) and high-power electromagnetic weapons (IEMI). He has served as Chairman of SC 77C, “EMC-High Power Transient Phenomena,” since the subcommittee was established in 1991. He was also the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on EMC (ACEC) for the IEC for 12 years, ending his service in December 2008.

In October 2004, Dr. Radasky was awarded the Lord Kelvin Medal in Seoul, South Korea by the IEC for exceptional service in the development of international standards. He was also recently appointed to convene a working group for Cigré dealing with the protection of high-voltage substations from the effects of high-power EM transients.  Dr. Radasky is a registered Professional Engineer in Electrical Engineering in the State of California and is a Fellow of the IEEE participating in the Antennas and Propagation, Power Engineering and EMC Societies. He is also a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies, and he was selected as an EMP Fellow in 1988. He has published over 380 company and government reports, conference papers and popular press articles. He is the holder of two best paper awards in 1973 (NEM) and 1984 (HEART Conference). He served as the guest editor for the August 2004 IEEE EMC Transactions Special Issue on Intentional EMI (IEMI) and High Power EM (HPEM). Dr. Radasky also serves as the Chairman of TC-5 (High-Power Electromagnetics) for the IEEE EMC Society.

Education:

B.S. (1968), Engineering Science, Electrical Engineering (Double Major): U.S. Air Force Academy
M.S. (1971), Electrical Engineering: University of New Mexico
Ph.D. (1981), Electrical Engineering: University of California, Santa Barbara