Dr. Baruch Levush, acting superintendent of the Electronics Science and Technology Division (ES&TD) at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, is the 2011 recipient of the IEEE-USA Harry Diamond Memorial Award for contributions and leadership in the modeling and design of vacuum electronic devices.
The Harry Diamond Memorial Award was created to honor individuals for significant technical contributions in the field of electrotechnology while in U.S. government service. This year's award recognizes Dr. Levush for his distinguished career at NRL and his numerous technical accomplishments in the field of vacuum electronics.
Early in his career, Dr. Levush focused on the development of theories and computational models of the nonlinear interaction of electromagnetic modes in free electron lasers and gyro-devices. Today, his research involves coherent radiation generation using electron beams with active involvement in the development of theoretical models and computational tools for analyzing the operation of vacuum electron devices with a focus on the invention of new concepts for high power amplifiers operating at frequencies ranging from one to 1,000 gigahertz (GHz).
Dr. Levush received his master's of science (M.Sc.) in physics from Latvian University in Riga, Latvia in 1972 and Ph.D. in plasma physics from Tel-Aviv University in 1981. Upon completion of his Ph.D. he received the Dr. Ch. Weizman Postdoctoral Fellowship and spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he later joined University of Maryland's Institute for Plasma Research as a research scientist in 1985.
In 1995, Dr. Levush began work at NRL as head of the Theory and Design Section of the Vacuum Electronics Branch of the ES&TD and in 1997 became responsible for developing a suite of new design codes for vacuum electron devices under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research, becoming head of NRL's Vacuum Electronics Branch in 2003. In 2010 he has been appointed as the acting superintendent of the ES&TD.
NRL's Vacuum Electronics Branch is the principal center for vacuum electronics research and development within Department of Defense (DOD). Dr. Levush frequently provides advisory services to support external research programs in vacuum electronics. The vacuum electronics branch's technical areas of activity include generation and amplification of high power sources for coherent electromagnetic radiation from Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) to terahertz (THz), high brightness electron-beam optics, surface science related to electron emission mechanisms, development of new types of microwave absorbing composite materials, vacuum microelectronics, development and application of the nonlinear theory of the beam-wave interaction and advanced computational physics for the modeling and simulation of vacuum electronic devices.
Dr. Levush has been a fellow of IEEE since 2001. He has received three NRL Technology Transfer Awards (2000, 2001, and 2005), and holds numerous awards including the 1999 Robert L. Woods Award of the U.S. DOD for his role in the successful development of a 10 kilowatt (kW) average power, W-band gyro-klystron; NRL's 2002 Award of Merit for Group Achievement as part of the W-band gyro-klystron and WARLOC Radar Team; R&D100's 2006 Award for MICHELLE, a 3D charge-particle-beam optics software tool; IEEE's 2007 International Vacuum Electronics Conference Award; NRL's 2007 E.O. Hulburt Annual Science Award (NRL's highest civilian honor for scientific achievement); the 2009 Captain Robert Dexter Conrad Award for scientific achievement, signed by the Secretary of the Navy; and the 2009 IEEE Electron Device Society's J.J. Ebers Award.