External Advisory Board

Ruth Milkman is a partner in Quadra Partners, LLC, a strategic-advisory firm providing integrated expertise across business, finance, and public policy in the context of converging communications technologies. Ms. Milkman served as the Chief of Staff of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013-2017 and Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau between 2009 and 2013. From 1998-2009 she worked as one of the leading telecommunications lawyers in Washington as co-founder of Lawler, Metzger, Milkman and Keeney, a firm serving clients ranging from start-ups to large established telecommunications companies and private-equity firms. Before joining Lawler, Metzger, Ms. Milkman held a variety of senior positions at the FCC, including Senior Legal Advisor to Chairman Reed Hundt and Deputy Chief of the International and Common Carrier Bureaus.

Ms. Milkman has a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. She served as a clerk for the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Dr. Stephanie G. Adams is the 5^th Dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas, Dallas. Previously Dr. Adams served as the Dean of the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology at Old Dominion University (2016–2019), Department Head and Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech (2011–2016) and held faculty and administrative positions at Virginia Commonwealth University (2008–2011) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1998–2008).

Her research interests include: Broadening Participation, Faculty and Graduate Student Development, International/Global Education, Teamwork and Team Effectiveness, and Quality Control and Management.  In 2003, she received the CAREER award from the Engineering Education and Centers Division of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Adams is a leader in the advancement and inclusion of all in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.  She has worked with a number of colleges and universities, government agencies and non-profit organizations on topics related to graduate education, mentoring, faculty development and diversifying STEM. A few examples include: The University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, NASA Must Program, QEM Network and the Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

Dr. Adams is a leader in the advancement and inclusion of all in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.  She has had the privilege of serving on the Board of Directors for a number of STEM organizations including the American Society of Engineering Education, the National Society of Black Engineers, Women in Engineering ProActive Network, and the National GEM Consortium. She has also worked with the National Academy of Engineering, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Institute of Industrial Engineers, the Quality Education for Minorities Network, and the Council of Graduate Schools to build supportive educational coalitions and partnerships in advancing the engineering profession and educational community. 

Dr. Adams is the recipient of numerous awards, including: the 2017 WEPAN Founder’s Award; the 2016 ASEE Engineering Management Division Bernard R. Sarchet Award; the 2013 North Carolina A&T State University Distinguished Alumni Award; the 2008 DuPont Minorities in Engineering Award from the American Society of Engineering Education; the Holling Teaching/Advising/Mentoring Award, the Henry Y. Kleinkauf Outstanding Assistant Professor Teaching Award, the Assistant Professor Service Award and the Chancellor’s Fulfilling the Dream Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and the Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year from the National Society of Black Engineers.  In 2005, she was selected as an AAAS/NSF Science and Engineering Policy Fellow and in 2006 she was an Invited Participant for the U.S. Frontiers in Engineering Symposium hosted by the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Adams is an honor graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, where she earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering, in 1988. In 1991, she was awarded the Master of Engineering degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1998, where she concentrated on Industrial Engineering and Management. She holds membership in a number of organizations and serves as Past President and a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education, is a member of the National Advisory Board of the National Society of Black Engineers and is a Diamond Life of member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.

Julius Knapp retired from the Federal Communications Commission on January 3, 2020 after 45+ years of service.  From 2006 till his retirement he served as the Chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET).  OET is the Commission’s primary resource for engineering expertise and provides technical support to the Chairman, Commissioners and FCC Bureaus and Offices. 

Mr. Knapp previously served as a Deputy Chief of OET from 2002 – 2006. Prior to that he was the Chief of the Policy & Rules Division where he was responsible for FCC frequency allocation proceedings and for proceedings amending the FCC rules for unlicensed radio frequency devices. Mr. Knapp was Chief of the FCC Laboratory from 1994 – 1997 where he was responsible for the FCC’s equipment authorization program and technical analyses. 

He received the FCC’s Silver and Gold Medal Awards for distinguished service at the Commission as well as the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award for exceptional achievement in the career Senior Executive Service. Mr. Knapp has been the recipient of the Eugene C. Bowler award for exceptional professionalism and dedication to public service; the Federal Communications Bar Association Excellence in Government Service Award; the WCAI Government Leadership award; the National Spectrum Management Association Fellow Award; the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award; Wi-Fi Alliance recognition for commitment to Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum; the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers E. Noel Luddy Award; and the Satellite Industry Association Satellite Leadership in Government Award. Mr. Knapp is a Life Member of the IEEE. He received a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York in 1974.

E-mail: Juliusknap@aol.com

Ms. Janice Obuchowski is President, CEO, and founder of Freedom Technologies.  She has held several leadership positions in the United States government and the private sector.  She was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the Department of Commerce (NTIA), where she led Executive Branch advocacy for passage of spectrum auction legislation.  She was also appointed to be United States Ambassador to the 2003 World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, where she successfully spearheaded the U.S. push for international Wi-Fi adoption.  Earlier in her career, Ms. Obuchowski held several positions at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), including Senior Advisor to the Chairman. She was also an executive at NYNEX (now Verizon) and practiced private antitrust law. 

Ms. Obuchowski serves or has served on several boards of directors, including Qualcomm (NASDAQ), Stratos Global (formerly a Bell Canada subsidiary, TSE), CSG International (NASDAQ), Inmarsat (LSE), and Orbital ATK (NYSE).

NOTABLE POSITIONS AND AWARDS INCLUDE:

– Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal
– Trustee of Mount St. Mary’s University, as well as other educational institutions and not for profit organizations
– Member of the Commerce Department’s Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC)
– Elected Trustee of the Federal Communications Bar Association
– Polish American of the Year 2005
– Senior Fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program
– World Economic Forum “Global Leader for Tomorrow”
– Roman Catholic Order of Malta

Ms. Obuchowski earned a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was honored as Alumna of the Year in 2005.  She also attended the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, France, and graduated with Honors from Wellesley College.

Charla Rath is current co-chair of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory

Committee (CSMAC) and former Verizon Vice President – Wireless Policy Development. At Verizon, Charla was responsible for developing and managing the company’s public policy initiatives related to spectrum management, particularly focusing on alternative spectrum auction mechanisms and sources of spectrum for next generation wireless networks, including 5G. Previously at Verizon Wireless, alongside the company’s business development and network planning groups, Charla identified and addressed the key policy and regulatory issues that enabled Verizon Wireless to secure a nationwide spectrum footprint.   

Prior to joining Verizon Wireless, Charla was Vice President – Strategic Affiliations, of NextWave Telecom Inc. and Vice President of Freedom Technologies, Inc., a Washington, DC-based telecommunications consulting firm. 

Charla also served as advisor to FCC Chairman Alfred C. Sikes on common carrier and spectrum policy issues and as a primary specialist in spectrum and internet policy at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.  

Charla has an MA in science, technology, and public policy from The George Washington University and a BSFS (Foreign Service) in international economics and finance from Georgetown University.

Rick Reaser an independent consultant on spectrum, satellite navigation, space and electronics technology.  He provides continueing consulting services to U.S.-CREST and a variety of other clients.  In the Spring of 2021, he provided independent consulting services Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company in the performance of technical and market due diligence to assess the viability of an aviation innovation.  He provided independent consulting services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through the Aerospace Corporation with a systems engineering program assessment of the Artemis program in Spring 2020.

From 2006 to 2019, Mr. Reaser led Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems’ Spectrum Management and Electromagnetic Environmental Effects Department.  He was an Air Force Officer from 1978 to 2006 when he retired as a Colonel. While in the Air Force, Reaser served in the Air Force’s Nastar Global Positioning System (GPS) Joint Program Office (JPO) twelve years across three duty tours as a satellite engineer, satellite contract manager, chief engineer, and deputy system program director.  While serving as the Defense Department’s deputy director of spectrum management, he was detailed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense to the White House and the State Department as a technical advisor to the US Ambassador to the World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC). In the late 1990’s he was selected as U.S. spokesperson and leader of the interagency effort to prevent GPS spectrum encroachment. He helped the US and Europe obtain new international spectrum for GPS and Galileo at two World Radio Conferences (2000 and 2003).  He negotiated the technical agreement between the Europe Union (EU) and the United States to share spectrum between the two systems in 2004. He led the design efforts for three new GPS civil signals L1C, L2C and L5 as well the new military signal called M-Code. 

Mr. Reaser was appointed by the Secretary of Commerce in January 2009 to the Commerce Spectrum Management Federal Advisory Committee as a Special Government Employee where he served for a decade.  In 2015 he was selected by the National Research Council (NRC) to serve on a Congressionally-directed committee that provided scientific, technical and management recommendations regarding Commerce Department’s telecom labs. 

Mr. Reaser is currently serving on a Congressionally-directed National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) committee reviewing Federal Communications Commission order FCC 20-48, which authorized Ligado Networks LLC to operate a low-power terrestrial radio network adjacent to the Global Positioning System (GPS) frequency band.

Email: rick-reaser@msn.com

William is CTO at Access Partnership. He was one of the founding directors of Neul, a company developing machine-to-machine technologies and networks, which was formed at the start of 2011 and became CEO of the Weightless SIG, a body standardizing IoT technology. Prior to this William was a Director at Ofcom where he managed a team providing technical advice and performing research. He has worked for a range of communications consultancies and spent three years providing strategic management across Motorola’s entire communications portfolio, based in Chicago. He was IET President 2014-2015.

William has published 17 books, 100 papers, and 18 patents. He is a Visiting Professor at Southampton University, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and the IET. He has been awarded multiple honorary doctorates by the UK’s leading universities and in 2018 was awarded the IET’s prestigious Mountbatten Medal for technology entrepreneurship.

A native of Southern California, Jonas Zmuidzinas received his B.S. in physics from Caltech in 1981 and his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley in 1987. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois in 1988-89 and then joined the Caltech faculty as an Assistant Professor of physics in 1990. He became Associate Professor in 1995, Professor in 2000, Merle Kingsley Professor in 2010, and Director of the Caltech Optical Observatories in 2018. Concurrently, he has held positions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and has collaborated closely with JPL scientists and technologists, including serving as a JPL Senior Research Scientist (2006-11), Director of the JPL Microdevices Laboratory (2007-2011), and JPL Chief Technologist (2011-16).

His research interests center on astrophysics at millimeter through far-infrared wavelengths, including the development of the technology needed to fully exploit this portion of the spectrum. He has constructed instrumentation for ground-based, airborne, and space telescopes, including invention and development of several types of superconducting detectors and devices as recognized by NASA’s Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal in 2013. He has served as a reviewer and advisor for NASA, NSF, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Sandia National Laboratories, other U.S. government agencies and international science agencies, and is author or co-author of over 250 scientific articles.