Paul F McManamon

Paul F. McManamon received his MS degree and PhD from Ohio State University, USA. He is founder and President of Exciting Technology LLC and the Technical Director of the Lidar and Optical Communications Institute (LOCI) at the University of Dayton. He previously served as the Chief Scientist for the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Sensors Directorate.  

A recognized leader in the field, McManamon has played an active role in LIDAR/Electro-Optics research and development for more than 40 years. He chaired the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Study “Laser Radar: Progress and Opportunities in Active Electro-Optical Sensing”, co-chaired the study “Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation”, which recommended a National Photonics Initiative (NPI) and served as vice chair of the “Seeing Photons: Progress and Limits of Visible and Infrared Sensor Arrays” study. He was the main LiDAR expert witness for Uber in the lawsuit vs Google/Waymo.

He received the W.R.G. Baker Award, and is a Fellow of Optica, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Directed Energy Professional Society, IEEE, the Military Sensing Symposia, and SPIE. His first book, Field Guide to Lidar, was published in 2015. In 2022, he received the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award for his book, "LiDAR Technologies and Systems."