• About AgustaWestland
• Stephen C.Moss, CEO

Mr. Douglas L. McMakin is Staff Engineer in the Applied Physics Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy, and has worked in the Radar Imaging Laboratory since 1987.

As Project Manager and Technical Lead at the Radar Imaging Laboratory, Mr. McMakin and his team developed and tested innovative real-time microwave and millimeter-wave holographic-imaging systems for airport personnel screening for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (now the TSA) and body-measurements for biometrics and clothing applications using various planar and cylindrical imaging techniques. Mr. McMakin was very active in the commercialization of these technologies with two licensed partners L-3/SafeView (www.safeviewinc.com) and Intellifit (www.intellifit.com).

Mr. McMakin is being honored for the development of the first-of-its-kind personnel security system that safely detects non-metallic and metallic objects, including explosives that might be worn by a suicide bomber. The system uses a cylindrical holographic imaging technology to conduct a 360-degree whole-body scan in 1.5 seconds. It bounces low-powered, non-ionizing millimeter waves off a person, penetrating clothing and reflecting off the body. Reflected signals are collected by the array/transceiver and sent to a high-speed image processing computer, which forms a high-resolution three-dimensional image of the body and any hidden objects. The system provides a safe, fast and effective alternative to metal detectors, X-ray machines and pat-down searches at security checkpoints.

Mr. McMakin was born in Richland, Washington, and received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University, Pullman, in 1986. He received a R&D 100 award in 2004 and a Federal Laboratory Consortium Technology Transfer award in 2005. Additionally, he won the R&D Magazine's Editors Choice award for "Most Promising New Technology for 2004." He has received seven patents from the U.S. Patent Office, and has several more patents pending.