Professor Samuel Drake

Professor

College of Science and Engineering

place Tonsley (4.05)
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

Sam Drake's research focuses on Electromagnetic Systems Spectrum Security. Spectrum security is about ensuring that information transmitted by electromagnetic waves is received by the intended recipients uncorrupted. It also concerned with detection, identification and localisation of electromagnetic transmitters.

Sam Drake completed his Bachelor of Science degree with first class honours at the University of Melbourne. His honours thesis was a study of chaos in the special relativistic dynamics. Soon after the commencement of his PhD Sam transferred to the Mathematical Physics Group at the University of Adelaide. Sam’s PhD thesis was on axisymmetric space-times in general relativity. Upon completion of his PhD Sam took a post-doctoral position at the University of Padua in Italy studying the formation of non-Keplerian disks about rotating dense stars.

Following the completion of post-doctoral research Sam took up a position as research scientist in the Australian public service. In this role Sam has represented Australia as a subject matter expert in government-to-government collaborations with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Sam has worked with Raytheon and Boeing to develop electromagnetic security systems for Australian fighter jets.

Sam’s understanding of the gravitational time dilation effects on Global Position System (GPS) satellites proved to be extremely valuable. Prior to the wide-spread use of global satellite navigation relativity theory wasn’t seen as having any engineering applications. Sam’s research has shown that the theory of relativity can be applied not only to satellite navigation but also to data fusion and electromagnetic emitter localisation. Sam has been so successful in demonstrating the applications of relativity theory that he now teaches a course on it. To the best of his knowledge, it is the only course of its kind offered in world.

Qualifications
  • BSc.(Hons 1st Class), The University of Melbourne
  • Grad. Dip. Scientific Leadership, The University of Melbourne
  • PhD, The University of Adelaide
Honours, awards and grants
  • Australian representative at the operations reserach society of Japan, 2001
  • US patent S. P. Drake, B. Anderson, and C. Yu, "Method and System for Deinterleaving Signals," United States of America Patent US8,102,297, 24 January 2012.
  • Editorial advisory board American Journal of Physics only member outside continental US, 2012-2015.
  • Awarded a “Defence Science Fellowship” in 2011 to work at Durham University, UK
Key responsibilities

Sam Drake's primary role is to develop a centre of expertise in Electromagnetic systems and security. The centre will be recognised as a world class institute for research and training of Spectrum Security professionals. I will be working closely with the Australian government and Australian industries to develop leading edge electromagnetic systems and security.

Along with developing capabilities in spectrum security I will also be developing a training program for undergraduate and higher degree students.

Teaching interests

General Relativity

Special Relativity

Spectrum Security

Topic coordinator
ENGR9911 Military Radar Systems
ENGR2861 Electromagnetics and Electromagnetic Waves
ENGR2722 Analysis of Engineering Systems
Topic lecturer
ENGR2861 Electromagnetics and Electromagnetic Waves
ENGR9911 Military Radar Systems
ENGR2722 Analysis of Engineering Systems
Supervisory interests
Applied mathematics
Physics
Signal and image processing
Higher degree by research supervision
Current
Principal supervisor: Electronic Warfare (1)
Higher degree by research student achievements
Alastair Wiegelmann

DSTG scholarship - AUG 2021

Expert for media contact
Defence
Electromagnetics
Signal processing
Space
Electronic Warfare
GPS
General Relativity
Global Satellite Navigation Systems
RADAR
Available for contact via
Or contact the media team
+61 8 82012092
0427 398 713
Media expertise
  • Defence
  • Electromagnetics
  • Signal processing
  • Space
Interests
  • Electronic Warfare
  • GPS
  • General Relativity
  • Global Satellite Navigation Systems
  • RADAR