Arnold van Ardenne utsågs till adjungerad professor i Radioastronomi fr o m 1 april 2006 och längst t o m 31 mars 2009.
(Texten finns enbart på engelska)
He was born in 1948 and received his MSc in Technical and Electronics Physics at TwenteUniversity in the Netherlands in 1973. From 1973-75 he worked as researcher at TNO defense laboratory in the field of electromagnetic modeling and component development for phased array radar antennas. During 1975-89 he worked as researcher and project manager at the Dutch national institute for research in astronomy ASTRON and from 1986 also at the national institute for Space research SRON on new instruments for radio astronomy from cm to (sub)mm wavelengths.
In the period 1989-94 he was responsible for new systems development at a Dutch Ericsson business unit as project manager and Research and Development manager. After that he became R&D director at ASTRON responsible for radio and optical instrumentation for astronomy and now as the director of emerging technologies.
Summary of Research
Arnold van Ardenne worked on technologies and components for low noise systems and cryogenic receivers and pioneered the use of the Westerbork Radio Aperture Synthesis array of telescopes as a single coherent phased array instrument for Very Long Baseline Interferometry. He developed an interest for high stability local oscillators and clock systems and pioneered the use of ultra stable phase transfer through telecommunications satellites.
For the purpose of what was later to be called the James Clark Radio sub-mm radio telescope on Hawaii, he pioneered the use of low noise multi-beam radio systems to enhance the observing field using superconducting mixers including its associated quasi optics and high stability local oscillator system.
At Ericsson he developed an interest in ultra low power handheld radio communication receivers for a range of international markets optimizing product development strategies.
Back at ASTRON he set up the organization and the R&D program for the development for future large radio telescopes LOFAR and the Square Kilometer Array and coordinates the European SKA program. Focus is on the technology development of very wideband phased arrays receiving systems and the associated signal processing challenges including techniques for mitigating radio frequency interference to allow high dynamic range imaging. He integrated the optical interuniversity group Kapteyn within the ASTRON R&D department and built up a strong optical/IR instrumentation group. The latter has contributed to a scientifically competitive observing suit at ESO’s VLT site in Chili and La Palma on the Canary Islands mostly with (inter)national institutes and universities.
Among others, van Ardenne has served on ESO’s Scientific and Technical Committee as well as on ALMA’s Management Board and is chairing the national committee of the URSI, the international radio science union that resides under the umbrella of the national royal academy of sciences and is a member of the I.E.E.E. and the national royal society of Engineers. He invests considerable effort in knowledge transfer from the public to the private (commercial) domain as (part-time) director of AstroTec Holding and is contributing to a new engineering program on sensor technologies.