Nicholas A. O'Donoughue, PhD

Nicholas O'Donoughue is a senior engineer at RAND. He is a radar signal processing expert with experience in algorithm development and systems analysis of airborne and spaceborne ISR systems, particularly concerning electronic warfare.  He has led studies across RAND's three defense-related FFRDCS (Project Air Force, the National Defense Research Institude, and the Arroyo Center), related to cybersecurity, electronic warfare, radar, and multi-function RF systems.  He has developed expertise in systems analysis, relating complex technical topics to larger studies, and has successfully led projects with a variety of modeling approaches and levels of necessary fidelity.

From 2012-2015, O'Donoughue was employed in the Airborne Radar Systems and Techniques Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, during which time he co-taught several iterations of the Build Your Own Radar courses at MIT and designed and taught a course on Radar Signal Processing at Tufts University.  He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, including the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, and is member of both Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor societies.

O'Donoughue received a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from Villanova University in 2006. He completed his M.S. and PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008 and 2011, respectively.  He has published 30 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers in the open literature, and more than a dozen peer-reviewed RAND reports.