Dr. Jon C. Freeman is an electronics engineer in the Electron Device Technology Branch. His areas of research are: particle-in-cell codes for simulation of electron guns for traveling wave tubes, analysis and design of GaN high electron mobility transistors for power amplifiers for space applications, and extreme temperature environments for earth based applications.

Dr. Freeman earned the bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees from Purdue University, all in Electrical Engineering, in 1966, 1971, and 1972 respectively. He began his career with Bell Telephone Laboratories in Andover, Massachusetts, as a Member of the Technical Staff. There he designed IMPATT, and GUNN diode oscillators for microwave radio systems. He also developed GaAs amplifiers for many applications. He became an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in 1979, where he taught in the Electrical Engineering Department. His duties included field theory, antennas, microwave principles, and solid-state courses, both undergraduate and graduate. His research centered on coupling of waves in gaseous and solid-state plasmas, optimization of power and noise in solid-state oscillators, and solid-state traveling wave amplifiers. In 1986 he worked briefly for Tracor Aerospace Austin, Inc., but left to join NASA in Cleveland, Ohio. His duties included systems engineer in the ACTS (Advanced Communication Technology Satellite), developer of microwave circuitry for the high data rate ground station receiver, which included the rain-fade simulator, local expert in forward error correction codes, and their applications to satellite channels.