Defence Technology Panel

Biography: Ashwin Iyer is a Professor of ECE at the University of Alberta and founding Director of its Centre for Applied Research in Defence and Dual-use Technologies (CARDD-Tech). He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto in 2009. He leads multiple projects with defence and adjacent industry in the areas of low-SWaPC antenna and sensor platforms. In 2023, he was invited to participate in the Royal Canadian Navy's Canadian Leaders at Sea program and helped organize the 2024 and 2025 instalments of the RCN Canadian Students at Sea program jointly with the U of A Faculty of Engineering. He has been associated with the IEEE AP-S for nearly 25 years and has served in many capacities, including as a member of AdCom, as a TPC Co-Chair for many instalments of the APS/URSI conference, and as an Associate and Track Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

Biography: Commander Graham Hill is the current Commanding Officer of the Canadian Forces Electronic Warfare Centre (CFEWC). CFEWC is the Canadian Armed Forces Electronic Warfare (EW) centre of excellence, which provisions EW support and electronic intelligence across the defence enterprise. He holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics (Dalhousie), and graduate degrees in both Project Management (George Washington), and Defence Studies (RMC). As a Naval Engineer he has had broad exposure across the fields of military operations, engineering, materiel support, and test and trials. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

Biography: Susan Watson is a Defence Scientist at Defence R&D Canada and Group Leader of the Cyber Operations and Effects Analysis Group at the Ottawa Research Centre. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master's focused on signal processing for wireless communications, both from the University of Ottawa. With over 20 years of experience in R&D, Susan has contributed to the development of Canada's capabilities in electronic warfare and wireless cyber operations. Her current research focuses on full-spectrum cyber operations, emitter identification using artificial intelligence, and sensor systems development.

Biography: Lieutenant Hannah Trock is a deputy PI for high power microwave antennas at the High Power Microwaves Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory. She focuses on identifying and advocating for high gain, beam steerable, and/or frequency agile antennas to be transitioned for HPM applications. In addition to aiding in curating an HPM antenna research portfolio, she maintains and establishes connections with university and offers an AFRL/RDH perspective on HPM antennas to transition their basic research to HPM applications. Lt Trock received her BS in Applied Physics under advisor Prof. Ryan Hooper.

Biography: Julien Hautcoeur graduated in electronics systems engineering and industrial informatics from the Ecole Polytechnique de l'Université de Nantes, France, and received a master's degree in radio communications systems and electronics in 2007 and a Ph.D. degree in signal processing and telecommunications from the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications of Université de Rennes 1, France, in 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he obtained postdoctoral training with the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, Canada. In 2014, he joined Tallysman Wireless Inc. in Ottawa, Canada, as an antenna and RF engineer. Since 2018 he is the Director of GNSS Product R&D at Calian GNSS (formally Tallysman). During many years of research in academia and industry, he has worked on antennas, printed wireless component design and optically transparent and conducting material fabrication. He also developed antenna solutions for high performance GNSS applications. He is an IEEE Senior member and his work has led to many patents and publications on new antenna technologies.

Biography: Rod Waterhouse received his BEng, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1987, 1989 and 1994, respectively. In 1994 he joined RMIT University as an academic. During 2000 Dr. Waterhouse was a Visiting Researcher at UCLA and the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. From 2001 - 2003 he was with the venture-backed Dorsal Networks. In 2004 he co-founded Octane Wireless, an antenna and RF-over-fiber technologies company. Dr. Waterhouse's research interests and product development experience include antennas, wireless communications, and microwave photonics. He has over 300 publications and has developed hundreds of products related to these technologies. In 2011 he was elected to the grade of IEEE Fellow.