Date: Monday, March 28, 2022
Time: 12:30 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.
Location: Van Leer, WC240
Speaker: C. Nils Smith
Speaker’s Title: Vice President
Speaker’s Affiliation: Southwest Research Institute
Seminar Title: Life as an Engineer
Abstract of Talk: We’ll summarize my engineering journey but will focus on the opportunities that engineering (and an engineering degree from Georgia Tech) hold for you. The most important aspect of this is not the presentation, but the interaction. Let’s talk.
Biographical Sketch of the Speaker: Mr. Smith is the Vice President of the Defense & Intelligence Solutions Division at Southwest Research Institute.
He earned a B.E.E. from Georgia Tech and M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a registered Professional Engineer in Texas.
Mr. Smith has accumulated significant experience in the design, development, and testing of shipboard, land-based, and airborne Electronic Support systems and in the management and development of related projects and programs. His work has concentrated on the MF, HF, VHF, and UHF bands and has involved Adaptive Doppler, Simple Loop, Spaced Loop, Dipole Adcock, Quadrupole Adcock, Phase Sampled Interferometer, Phase Mode, Wullenweber, Vector Matching, and Adaptive Antenna Array Superresolution direction finding techniques and radiolocation techniques.
Mr. Smith has had extensive experience with military, rugged commercial and commercial design requirements and in project, program, and administrative management. His main technical emphasis has been in direction finding antennas, beam-forming networks, and RF system design and analysis.
Mr. Smith has promoted, developed, and managed programs for U.S. and foreign governments as well as U.S. and foreign commercial organizations. His experience includes management of multi-million-dollar programs and acting as the Principal Investigator for SwRI-sponsored Internal Research projects. He has managed programs involving analysis, research, development, production, testing, consulting, training, and field services. He also led numerous QRC efforts. He is experienced with cost/schedule status control systems and other modern project management techniques involving technical performance, fiscal, schedule, personnel, documentation, logistics, reliability, maintainability, and security. Mr. Smith has also served as an instructor and course administrator for courses in Signal Exploitation and Geolocation, Radio Direction Finding, and RF Systems Engineering.
Mr. Smith is also experienced with ISO-9001, AS9100, and CMMI for Development quality management systems and NIST 800-171 and CMMC compliance.
Mr. Smith was selected as the Engineering Manager of the Year by the Engineering Management Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for 2006. He was also awarded the Dixie Crow Stanley B. Hall Executive Management Award in 2020.
He earned a Certificates in Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Marketing, and Strategic Decision and Risk Management from the UT Austin McCombs School of Business.
Mr. Smith serves on Advisory Boards/Councils for the University of the Incarnate Word in Engineering, Trinity University in Engineering Science, the University of Texas at San Antonio in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and St. Mary’s Engineering Department. He also serves on the Boy Scouts of America Alamo Area Council Executive Board, and the Westside Family YMCA Board, Sensor Open Systems Architecture Consortium Advisory Board, and the JBSA 5G Steering Committee.