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Dr. Joe Watkins

Dr. Joe Watkins Director

General Engineering
110B Holtzendorff Hall, Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634

Phone: (864) 656-2542
Email:  rjwatki@clemson.edu

Courses Taught

  • ENGR 1050/1060 Engineering Fundamentals
  • ENGR 1070/1080 MATLAB programming
  • Statics and Dynamics
  • Thermodynamics
  • Experimentation
  • Design
  • Directed Energy
  • Nuclear Energy

 

Meet Dr. Watkins

Education

  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School (2004)
  • M.S., Astronautical Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School (1991)
  • B.S., Electrical Engineering, Naval Postgraduate School (1990)
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, Auburn University (1983)

Certifications & Licenses

  • Certification as a Professional Engineer, State of California, 2003
  • Certification as a Nuclear Engineer, Charleston, South Carolina, 1987

Research Interests/Expertise

  • Directed Energy Propagation and Control
  • Optical Turbulence
  • Directed Energy Detection and Avoidance

Professional Activities

  • Inaugural Member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Ocean Systems Engineering (June 2010 to 2014)
  • Member of JTO’s Technical Area Working Group (TAWG) for the Free-Electron Laser (FEL) Initial Naval Prototype
  • Member of JTO’s Technical Area Working Group (TAWG) for Advanced Concepts
  • Senior Advisor to NAVSEA's Submarine High Energy Laser Working Group
  • Member of the Directed Energy Professional Society (2006 to present)

Fun Facts

  • Retired as a captain after 31 years in the U.S. Navy

Publications

Recent Refereed Journal Publications

  1. E. Wang, S. Avramov-Zamurovic, R. Watkins, C. Nelson, and R. Malek-Madani, "Probability density function estimation of laser light scintillation via Bayesian mixtures," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 31, 580-590 (2014).
  2. Tresansky, A., Joyce, P., Radice, J. Watkins, R., "Numerical Modeling of Electromagnetic Radiation Effects in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers", J. Directed Energy, Vol. 5, Num. 2, Winter, 2014. 
  3. Roberts M., Watkins R., and Barton O. Jr, "Development of a Feed-Forward
    Compensation Technique to Calculate Beam Position in the Mitigation of
    Platform-Induced Jitter", Journal of Directed Energy, Volume 3, #4, pg. 384-397, Summer 2010.
  4. Watkins R, and Barton O Jr. "Characterizing the vibration of an elastically point supported rectangular plate using eigensensitivity analysis", Thin Walled Structures, Vol 48, Issues 4-5, pg 327-333, April/May 2010
  5. Watkins R, Santillan S., Radice J., Barton, O. Jr. "Vibration response of an elastically point-supported plate with attached masses", Thin Walled Structures, Vol 48 Issue 7, pg. 519-527, July 2010
  6. Watkins, R. and Agrawal, B. “The Use of an LMS Filter in the Control of Optical Beam Jitter”, Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, v 30, no. 4, p 1116-1122, July/August 2007

Recent Conference Proceedings (reviewed)

  1. Brian Jenkins, Peter Joyce, Deborah Mechtel, Kyle Milden, Kyle Elam, and Joseph Watkins, “Highly localized thermal response measurements in composites using embedded fiber Bragg grating temperature sensors”. Proceedings of the SPIE, Vol 8693, pgs 869308-1 – 869308-10.
  2. Tresansky, A., Joyce, P., Radice, J. Watkins, R. “Numerical Modeling of Electromagnetic Radiation Effects in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers”, Directed Energy Professional Society – 15th Annual Directed Energy Symposium, Albuquerque, NM, November 28, 2012.
  3. O’Brien, R., Watkins, R., “Parametric Studies of Jitter Control and Target Tracking Algorithms in a Directed Energy System”, US/UK Directed Energy Symposium, Swindon, UK, October 10, 2012
  4. Radice, J., Joyce, P., Tresansky, A., Watkins, R., “A COMSOL Model of Damage Evolution Due to High Energy Laser Irradiation of Partially Absorptive Materials”, 2012 COMSOL Conference, Boston, MA, October 3, 2012.
  5. O’Brien, R., Watkins, R. Thorp, O., “Experimental verification of an optical beam stabilizing controller”, 2012 American Control Conference, Montréal, Canada, 28 June, 2012.
  6. O’Brien, R., Watkins, R. Thorp, O., "Cross-Coupling Estimation for Optical Beam Stabilization", 2012 American Control Conference, Montréal, Canada, 28 June, 2012.
  7. O’Brien, R. Watkins, R. “H-Infinity Jitter Control for a Platform-Mounted Laser”, 18th World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control, Milano, Italy, 29 August, 2011.
  8. O’Brien, R. Watkins R. “Adaptive H-Infinity Vibration Control”, 2011 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, Arlington, VA, 1 Nov, 2011
    Roberts, M., Watkins, R., Barton, O. “Development of a Feedforward Compensation Technique to Predict Beam Position in the Mitigation of Platform Induced Jitter”, Directed Energy Professional Society – 12th Annual Directed Energy Symposium November 2009.
  9. Barton, O. and Watkins, R. “Evaluation of the Mechanical Response of an Optical Test Platform” Society for Experimental Mechanics - 11th International Congress and Exhibition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics, v 3, p 1163-1170, 2008.
  10. Watkins, R. and Agrawal, B. “The Use of an LMS Filter in the Control of Optical Beam Jitter”, 2005 International Symposium on Intelligent Control 13th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, June, 2005
  11. Watkins, R., Agrawal, B., Shin Y. and Chen, H-J “Jitter Control of Space and Airborne Laser Beams”, 22nd AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference and Exhibit Technical Papers, v 1, p 311-327, 2004
  12. Watkins, R., Chen, H-J, Agrawal, B. and Shin, Y. “Optical Beam Jitter Control”, Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, v 5338, p 204-213, Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies XVI, 2004