IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2022 - 55

Willett
5) Northrop-Grumman (Bethpage, NY, USA) implemented
our debiasing procedure for polar-to-Cartesian
measurement conversion in the Navy E-2
airborne early warning system.
6) The air traffic control tracking algorithm Raytheon
developed for the FAA (as well as for export) is
based on the IMM estimator. (I was told that it prevented
runway incursions of holy cows in New
Delhi where it was deployed first.)
7) The French Navy developed the low observable (low
SNR) passive track detector named " The Magician, "
based on our ML-PDA algorithm, for extremely weak
target signals (like across the Mediterranean).
Peter: Among all the people I have met in academia, your
sense of humor stands out. Are there some especially
funny things you would like to share?
Yaakov: One funny thing is the " inherited sense of humor "
ofsome ofmy graduate students, exemplified by the student
who acknowledgedme for having taught him about sex (state
estimation ofx) and told me about the highlight ofhis visit to
Prague is the museumofsex machines.
Peter: Would you like to talk about your family?
Yaakov: My mother instilled in me the desire to succeed by
pointing out how some very smart people in our family who
were not interested in studying did not realize their potential.
My father was a very punctilious person who showed me
how attention to detail (and mathematical notations.. .)is
vital in technical work.
Peter: I was struck there you use the word punctilious,
which is the perfect word, but it is a fairly unusual word.
You have an incredibly good command of English despite
the fact that I know it is not your first language. How
many languages do you know?
Yaakov: Four and a half. My mother tongue was Hungarian
and I went to school in Romania. Learned Russian
for seven years. I know seven words in Russian
because the teacher taught us so you never learned the
language-that is why I hated Russian. Anyway, I
moved to Israel and learned Hebrew and English and I
know French I would say half.
Peter: I know that sailing is a huge passion for you. How
did you first get interested in it? What do you especially
love about it?
Yaakov: This is the main activity in which I am " in control " -otherwise
" I am out of control. " Control was my initial
field of research that I gave up (since I felt that my
contributions there were useless) in favor of tracking. I
learned how to sail when I was at a conference in Trieste and
AUGUST 2022
Yaakov with ATC code (written by Kiruba) projected behind him,
early 2000s.
went out on a sloop with a friendwho gave me a 5-minute lesson
and jumped in the water because he had to take a close
look at a topless bather on a nearby rock. Based on his lesson,
I was able to maneuver the boat until he finished feasting his
eyes and I picked him up from the water. When I asked him
the following day if I can tell his wife about how I learned to
sail from him he wasmortified, so I hope she never finds out.
Peter: When will you start to play golf with me?
Yaakov: I am not yet eligible to play golf. [PKW: He
means he is too young for golf.]
Peter: Do you have some advice for people just starting out
in their careers? This would be for junior academics, for
new-minted grads working in defense, for Ph.D. students; or
even for strong undergraduates that you see as groomable?
Yaakov: New Ph.D.s should always think about formulating
the problem very clearly: use the proper notation and
then to make it really novel do something like adding a
dimension in tackling them-as in using a rigorous probabilistic
approach to data association when all the
approaches up to that point were deterministic.
Peter: I know when I met you I was struck by the fact that
when yousaw otherpeopledostuffyouwereonlyinterested
in when it made a big difference like a factor of two; doing
what you called " epsilontics " was not so interesting.
Yaakov: Many years ago I had a Ph.D. who showed me
(I was still in control at the time) of a new control algorithm
that provided a statistically significant improvement:
it was 0.1%. But it was statistically significant. You need a
significant improvement both statistically as well as from
the practitioner's point of view.
Peter: Do you have any regrets? Different career paths
you might have taken other research topics, etc.?
Yaakov: I have not yet decided what I will do when I
grow up-I am a slow study. One path I doubt I will take
is AI-I prefer natural intelligence.
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
55
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2022

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