Joe Taylor, K1JT and Bruce Walker, W1BW, are winners of the 2010 ARRL Doug DeMaw, W1FB, Technical Excellence Award for their article “WSPRing Around the World” that appeared in the November 2010 issue of QST.

Joe Taylor was first licensed as KN2ITP in 1954, and has since held call signs K2ITP, WA1LXQ, W1HFV, VK2BJX and K1JT. He was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts from 1969 to 1981 and since then Professor of Physics at Princeton University, serving also as Princeton's Dean of the Faculty from 1997 to 2004 and retiring in 2007. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for discovery of the first orbiting pulsar.

Active on all amateur bands from 160 meters through 2.3 GHz, Joe's favorites have always been the VHF bands. Starting in 2001, he applied techniques learned and developed during his half-century of astrophysical research to the problems of communicating with very weak radio signals. This work led to development of the open-source computer programs WSJT, MAP65, and WSPR, which are freely available to the Amateur Radio community. Among Joe's proudest achievements are his recent completion of both WAS and DXCC on 2 meters. His confirmed DXCC total on 2 meters now stands at 106, with all QSOs made by EME ("moonbounce") using the JT65 signaling protocol of WSJT.

Bruce Walker has a Bachelor in Science degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the Director of Genome Assembly and Analysis at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bruce was an avid shortwave listener in his youth and became a ham in 1991. His involvement in Amateur Radio has gone through several phases: homebuilt QRP, amateur satellites, early computer-based digital modes (PSK31, MSFK, etc), and occasional contesting. His current interests are software-defined radios, weak-signal HF work and DSP modes. Bruce lives in Concord, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

Established in 1975 as the ARRL Technical Excellence Award, the name was changed in 1997 to honor the late Doug DeMaw, W1FB, a former ARRL Headquarters technical editor and well-known Amateur Radio author. The award consists of an engraved 9 inch pewter cup.