Dr. Whitaker is ESCHER Research Institute’s Chief Executive Officer. He founded ESCHER in 2003 and led ESCHER through periods of startup incubation, spin-off, and expansion. Dr. Whitaker is responsible for the overall strategic direction of ESCHER and provides management and thought leadership.

Dr. Whitaker has 20 years of professional and research experience in advanced networking, communications, and sensor development. Dr. Whitaker is a thought leader in the management of engineering development programs, acquisition, source selection, program planning, and test planning and execution. Additionally, Dr. Whitaker has deep technical knowledge and expertise in unattended ground sensors, networked micro-sensors, ad-hoc networks, geospatial visualization, geo-registration, image compression and exploitation, augmented reality, geo-location-based networks, optical networks, wireless communications, and ultra-wideband systems.

Prior to joining ESCHER, Dr. Whitaker was the Chief Scientist of Puritan Research Corporation. In this capacity, Dr. Whitaker consulted on various Department of Defense programs and provided technical expertise to clients such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Prior to that, Dr. Whitaker was the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Sarnoff Corporation’s nVention Group. At nVention, a spinoff company developing applications for geospatial visualization technologies, Dr. Whitaker developed business models, performed marketing studies, and interfaced with outside investors to raise capital. Prior to that, Dr. Whitaker was a program manager at DARPA where he managed the Warfighter Visualization program which advanced the state-of-the-art in geo-location, image processing, augmented reality, ultra-wideband, and geospatial technologies. As a program manager, Dr. Whitaker successfully transferred research results from the laboratory to commercial systems and worked with government and military customers to ensure successful end-user deployment. Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Whitaker was a senior member of the technical staffs at Lincoln Laboratories, AT&T Bell Labs Research, and AT&T Labs Research.

Dr. Whitaker holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Whitaker lives in Great Falls, Virginia.