Weatherall Technical Applications

James C. Weatherall

Jim graduated from Caltech with a B.S. in astronomy, writing a senior thesis Solar Velocity with Respect to the Interstellar Medium at Mt. Wilson Observatory. His Ph.D. thesis in plasma physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder entitled Nonlinear Langmuir Waves in a Weak Magnetic Field, discusses type III solar radio bursts.

As a post-doc, Jim was a National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences resident research associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and worked in the High Energy Astrophysics group. As a senior engineer in high-powered microwaves at General Dynamics, Jim designed magnetrons and Cerenkov amplifier sources. While an associate professor of astrophysics at New Mexico Tech, Jim taught graduate level courses, acted as department chair and organized graduate seminars. He researched radio emission from pulsars and his work identifies unique signatures for the radio emission process in relativistic plasma of the pulsar magnetosphere.

Currently, Jim is a Battelle senior research scientist with the Department of Homeland Security developing electromagnetic screening technologies. He has received patents for several inventions and awarded by the IEEE/AIAA for his outstanding research.

Time history of electrostatic wave showing spatial turbulence evolution.
Plasma wave turbulence in a pulsar magnetosphere organizes into localized regions of intense field.
Nonlinear wave behavior may underly the radio emission and observed temporal structure of the radio pulse.

Kate Weatherall

Kate's passion for research and writing combined with her scientific background and attention to detail has led to a career spanning both print and electronic media. Along with writing and editing technical documentation for more than fifteen years, Kate continues designing and developing websites.

Her ability as a technical communicator has given her the opportunity to be employed by both the computer and scientific communities. Her experience has led to working with collegiate sports clubs, internationally recognized musicians, private individuals and academic institutions.

She served as advisory board member at a pre-school in Claremont, California and at a private school in Socorro, New Mexico. While raising two exceptional children, and actively participating as a parent volunteer, she established a food cooperative, returned to college, earned her B.S., and graduated with honors. Fulfilling her degree requirements included writing a technical communication thesis, Structuring a Web Site: Mapping, Modularity, Metaphors, Hierarchy, and Non-Linearity, discussing the design, developmental, and corporate elements necessary to create an effective website. She also completed a geology research thesis entitled Uranium in Socorro County, discussing the sources and transport of uranium throughout the state of New Mexico and the possibility of it affecting the local environment. Kate founded Weatherall Technical Applications in 2001.

AIPS++ (Astronomical Information Processing System) software is designed to
calibrate, edit, form, analyze and enhance data received from radio telescopes into usable images.
ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array), an international astronomical partnership
building a complete imaging telescope producing astronomical images at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
(Designed and maintained both websites. Wrote and edited technical documentation.)