Touching base: Grant Hampson

© Madroon Community Consultants (MCC)

It is always good to see a former colleague, who has left for pastures with a different shade of green. On the one hand it is sad to see them go, but it is a small world, and it is good to gain an influential friend in one of our sister institutes. Especially in the age of SKA, where all institutes have to work closely together.

Grant Hampson worked at ASTRON as a postdoc from 1997 to 2004, where he did sterling work on mid-frequency aperture arrays like OSMA and THEA. After that he moved to Ohio to work with Steve Ellingson (another friend), and then on to CSIRO in Sydney (lots of friends). There he worked on the broadband upgrade of ATCA, a digital filter bank for Parkes, and was leader of the digital systems for ASKAP/BETA. At present he is Head of Design for ASKAP 2.0.

He looks back with pleasure on his time with ASTRON, especially because he was allowed to work on end-to-end systems. He also feels that his personal contacts in Dwingeloo greatly facilitate the work of the multi-national (ASTRON/CSIRO/NZA) SKA CSP Low.CBF group, for who's dPDR he was visiting us.

Since Grant and his family like the outdoors, they have chosen to live quite a long way from Sydney, on lake Macquarie near the Pacific coast. He has promised to send a few pictures, for a future AJDI.