About
Lee O. Upton – Biography
Lee O. Upton is Assistant Director at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and is responsible for Air Defense, Tactical Systems Technology, Counterterrorism, and Homeland Defense.
He joined the Laboratory in 1978 as a Member of the Technical Staff in the Cruise Missile Detection Technology Program. In 1982, Mr. Upton assumed responsibility for the Millimeter Wave Radar in the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll, as the Lincoln Laboratory Section Head. Under his management, the radar was successfully completed as a primary sensor of the Western Ballistic Missile Test Range. Mr. Upton was promoted to Assistant Leader of the Radar Systems Group in 1984, followed by Associate Leader and Group Leader appointments in 1986. He was responsible for guiding the design of an adaptive counterstealth surveillance radar for the U.S. Navy.
From 1989–1992, Mr. Upton was on assignment with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he was the government program manager of an advanced radar technology program of national importance. In addition to managing the program, he worked with Congressional staffers and provided technical guidance to government officials in the Department of Defense. For his accomplishments, Mr. Upton was awarded the Secretary of Defense Award for Technical Excellence. Upon completion of his tour in the government, he was appointed Head of the Air Defense Technology Division and later as Head for Surface Surveillance and Control.
Mr. Upton holds a BS degree in electrical engineering from Tufts University. He was elected to the Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu academic honor societies. Upon graduation from Tufts, he received a National Science Foundation Scholarship for graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, where he earned an MS degree. Upon completion of his graduate work, Mr. Upton joined the RCA Corporation, Missile and Surface Radar Division, to work on advanced concepts in radar signal processing. He led corporate activities to apply emerging technologies to radar processing; for this work, he received the Chief Engineer’s Technical Excellence Award. He was assigned to the Kwajalein Test Site as an RCA systems engineer. It was after a successful tour at Kwajalein that he joined Lincoln Laboratory.
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