John Conklin is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. He joined the UF faculty in 2012 after a three-year research associateship at the W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory at Stanford. He received his BS and MEng degrees from Cornell and PhD from Stanford in 2009. In 2011, John was the Fulbright Junior Lecturer at the University of Trento in Italy. He has served as Chair of NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos Program Analysis Group and Vice-Chair of NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee. John has been awarded the NASA Group Achievement Award (2005) for the Gravity Probe B science team, the Balhaus Prize (2009) for best PhD thesis in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford, the Zeldovich Medal (2010) from COSPAR & the Russian Academy of Sciences, the NASA Early Career Faculty Award (2014), NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in Space Astrophysics for Early Career Researchers (2015), Teacher of the Year Award (2015) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UF, and the Space Science Award from AIAA (2016) for the Gravity Probe B science team.

Education

Ph.D., 2009, Stanford University

Teaching Interests

Dynamics, Astrodynamics, Navigation, Precision Engineering

Research Interests

John’s research is in the development of precision instruments for spacecraft Position, Navigation, Timing and Gravity (PNTG), and the design and analysis of space missions that depend heavily on these technologies.

Selected Publications

1. H. Inchauspé, T. Olatunde, S. Apple, S. Parry, B. Letson, N. Turetta, G. Mueller, P.J. Wass, J.W. Conklin, “Numerical modeling and experimental demonstration of pulsed charge control for the space inertial sensor used in LISA”, Physical Review D, Vol. 102, No. 4, pp. 042002, (2020).
2. H. Hong, J. W. Conklin, “Finding the suitable drag-free acceleration noise level for future low-low satellite-to-satellite tracking geodesy missions”, Advances in Space Research, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 32-50, (2019).
3. J. Anderson, N. Barnwell, M. Carrasquilla, J. Chavez, O. Formoso, A. Nelson, T. Noel, S. Nydam, J. Pease, F. Pistella, T. Ritz, S. Roberts, P. Serra, E. Waxman, J. W. Conklin, W. Attai, J. Hanson, A.N. Nguyen, K. Oyadomari, C. Priscal, J. Stupl, J. Wolfe, B. Jaroux, “Sub-nanosecond ground-to-space clock synchronization for nanosatellites using pulsed optical links”, Advances in Space Research, Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 3475-3490, (2018).
4. D. Bortoluzzi, M. Benedetti, J. W. Conklin, “Measurement of metallic adhesion force-to-elongation profile under high strain-rate conditions”, Experimental and Applied Mechanics, Vol. 4, pp. 67-74, (2013).
5. C. W. F. Everitt, D. B. DeBra, B. W. Parkinson, J. P. Turneaure, J. W. Conklin, M. I. Heifetz, G. M. Keiser, A. S. Silbergleit, T. Holmes, J. Kolodziejczak, M. Al-Meshari, J. C. Mester, B. Muhlfelder, V. G. Solomonik, K. Stahl, P. W. Worden Jr., W. Bencze, S. Buchman, B. Clarke, A. Al-Jadaan, H. Al-Jibreen, J. Li, J. A. Lipa, J. M. Lockhart, B. Al-Suwaidan, M. Taber, S. Wang, “Gravity Probe B: Final Results of a Space Experiment to Test General Relativity”, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 106, No 22, p. 221101, (2011).