Dr. James A. Dayton, Jr. has been a pioneer in the application of efficiency enhancement, computer aided design, and micro fabrication technology to the development of vacuum electron devices operating at mm and sub mm wavelengths. Dr. Dayton received the BS in EE from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1959, the MS in EE in from the University of Iowa in 1960 and the PhD in EE from the University of Illinois in 1965. He is presently the Chief Technology Officer and co-owner of Teraphysics Corp. He also contributes his time pro bono to various IEEE activities, and serves as a consultant to a variety of clients.
Upon graduation from the University of Illinois, Dr. Dayton became a Research Engineer, working on plasma diagnostics at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, NY. In 1967 he joined the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, OH, and was assigned to the Microwave Amplifier Section in 1971. From then until his retirement from NASA in 1998, Dr. Dayton’s work as a researcher and supervisor was primarily in the area of efficiency enhancement of the TWT with particular emphasis on computer modeling. He produced the first computer models of multistage collectors, and under his leadership TWTs of unprecedented efficiency were developed for the NASA missions, Mars Observer and Cassini.
In August 1998 Dr. Dayton was recruited by Hughes Electron Dynamics (later Boeing Electron Dynamic Devices) of Torrance, CA to serve as Director of Technology and Advanced Development, commuting to Los Angeles from his home in Cleveland. Under his direction, computer modeling techniques developed at NASA were reduced to industrial engineering design practice at Hughes/Boeing, leading to first pass success in the development of highly efficient TWTs operating over a range from 2 to 45 GHz. This resulted in an unprecedented number of new devices entering production. Dr. Dayton resigned from Boeing at the end of May 2001 to pursue other interests and joined Genvac Aerospace Corp. in November 2001 where his interest has been in application of CVD diamond to THz oscillators and amplifiers. Teraphysics Corp. was spun off from Genvac in 2004 for the purpose of developing and marketing these devices.
Dr. Dayton is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and the author or co-author of more than 140 journal articles, conference presentations, patents and NASA reports. He served as a member of Working Group A of the DoD Advisory Group on Electron Devices from 1986 to 1998. Dr. Dayton served as the Editor for Vacuum Devices for the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices from 1994 to 1999 and as an elected member of the Electron Devices Society (EDS) AdCom from 1999 through 2005. He organized the IEEE EDS Technical Committee for Vacuum Devices in 1998 and served as its chairman until June 2004. He served as General Chair of the first International Vacuum Electronics Conference in May 2000. Dr. Dayton has received NASA achievement awards in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, and 1998 for contributions to vacuum electronics technology and to the Cassini mission to Saturn. He is a member of Phi Eta Sigma, Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi. Dr. Dayton received an R&D 100 Award in 1989 for work on the efficiency enhancement of high power klystrons, the Robert L. Woods Award for leadership in vacuum electronics technology from the Undersecretary of Defense in May 2000 and the IVEC Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics in April 2006 for “for pioneering contributions to the development of vacuum electronic devices and for visionary leadership in the vacuum electronics industry.”
John R. Pierce Award for Excellence in Vacuum Electronics 2006
For pioneering contributions to the development of vacuum electronic devices and for visionary leadership in the vacuum electronics industry.