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		| Paper: | 
		On the Way to the ATA | 
	 
	
		| Volume: | 
		345, From Clark Lake to the Long Wavelength Array:  Bill Erickson's Radio Science | 
	 
	
		| Page: | 
		471 | 
	 
	
		| Authors: | 
		Backer, D.C. | 
	 
	
	
		| Abstract: | 
		This article summarizes instrument developments in which my colleagues (acknowledged below) and I have been involved for use at radio telescopes around the globe. My commitment to these projects goes back to my educational experience — an eclectic undergraduate engineering degree at Cornell, “hands-on” experiences during a master's degree program at Jodrell Bank, and my involvement with early days of “'pulsarology” at Arecibo. These groundings led to my NRC fellowship at NASA/GSFC with the low-frequency VLBI group where I was involved with the Tom Clark-Bill Erickson research group. They reinforced the “hands-on” approach to frontier science. My personal projects are described in the following section. Following that I will summarize the design and status of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a joint project of the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley Radio Astronomy Laboratory. The ATA will provide new opportunities for frontier science with novel signal processing instrumentation. | 
	 
	
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