“Space’s preeminent subsystem is digital, and translating digitized signal sensors to data requires scientific design expertise. I develop the technology, design and support digital data processing for space-based radio astronomy science.”

Hamid Pourshaghaghi is Assistant Professor in the Electronic Systems group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His research primarily focuses on low-frequency space-based radio astronomy, such as the design of DSP digital receivers. Pourshaghaghi’s research domain has the detection and tomography of the 21-cm hydrogen line emission from the Dark Ages period of the universe as its principal science objective. Low-frequency radio astronomy, i.e. below ~30 MHz, can only be done well from space due to the cut-off in the Earth’s ionosphere, the man-made RFI and the AKR and QTN noise that make sensitive measurement from ground-based facilities impossible.

Pourshaghaghi was recently the project manager and team leader for the design and construction of the digital receiver system for the NCLE (Netherlands-China Low Frequency Explorer) radio telescope, which successfully launched to the other side of the Moon in May 2018.

His research at the time of his PhD concerned the synthesis and implementation of adaptive energy-aware circuits and systems. 

Hamid Reza Pourshaghaghi received his PhD from the Electronic Systems group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in 2013. He then took a postdoc position at the Astrophysics department of Radboud University. In 2015, Pourshaghaghi and a few colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen started Radboud Radio Lab (RLL), where he became the Lead Electrical Engineer in 2015 and the program manager in 2018. He has worked as a part-time Assistant Professor at the Electronic Systems group at TU/e since 2016.