Charlie Thornton

Charlie Thornton

Research Assistant Professor, Spectrum Dominance Division

Charlie Thornton received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in Spring 2023, defending a dissertation entitled "On the Value of Online Learning for Cognitive Radar Waveform Selection".  He has published several research articles on applying developments in Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning, Online Learning, and Meta-Learning to cognitive radar systems, distributed radar networks, and cognitive jamming systems. His work on Universal Learning for Tracking Radar won the Vanu Bose best paper award at MILCOM 2021. He also received the Wireless @ VT student leadership award. Prior to his time at Virginia Tech, he studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he also competed in Cross Country and Track & Field. He is married to VT inorganic chemist Diana Thornton.  He enjoys studying theology, language learning, hiking, and playing music.