Rate My Professor Cathryn Mitchell

Professor Cathryn Mitchell is Professor of Radio Science and Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath, where she has been since 1999. She completed her BSc and PhD at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, with her doctoral research pioneering the use of radio tomography to image the Earth's ionosphere. She currently holds a Royal Society Industry Fellowship with Spirent Communications focused on the future of position, navigation, and timing (PNT). From 2017 to 2022, Mitchell served as Academic Director of the University’s Doctoral College. She is a member of the Space, Telecommunications and Atmospheres Research Group (STAR), conducting research on the solar-terrestrial environment, space weather, climate monitoring, and applications to communications, surveillance radars, and navigation systems.

Mitchell’s expertise encompasses radio propagation, ionospheric physics, GNSS navigation and timing, HF communications, data assimilation, and 4D time-dependent tomography. She developed groundbreaking Earth observation techniques by adapting medical tomography principles to produce images of the ionosphere, delivering the first global-scale 3D time-evolving perspectives during extreme space weather storms. This innovation has reshaped understanding of ionospheric responses and bolstered satellite navigation system reliability. Her Multi-Instrument Data Assimilation System (MIDAS), developed for ionospheric monitoring using GPS signals, is licensed to other research organizations. She has authored over 100 journal papers, including works on ionospheric total electron content measurement and scintillation signatures on GPS signals. Mitchell has advised UK and US governments and the European Space Agency on space weather impacts and infrastructure resilience, delivered keynote addresses such as the President’s Invitation Address at the Royal Institute of Navigation, and received the 2020 Royal Astronomical Society Chapman Medal and the 2019 Institute of Physics Edward Appleton Medal and Prize for her pioneering contributions.