REAL History

History: REAL was initially conceived by Dr. Shane Mayor in 2001 as his Advanced Studies Program post-doc project. Dr. Scott Spuler joined EOL in 2002 and applied industry standard optical engineering practices to bring the concept to reality. Mr. Bruce Morley harnessed the power of Labview to develop REAL's data acquisition and beam-steering unit control systems. The trio draws on a wide variety of software, electrical and mechanical engineering assistance throughout NCAR’s EOL.

REAL made its first laboratory proof of concept in July of 2003. Success was determined by the ability to make a time versus height image of aerosol backscatter at 1.54 microns that contained meteorological structures such as the entrainment zone and elevated aerosol layers.

In May of 2004, REAL made its debut field-deployment in the heart of Washington, D. C. as part of NCAR’s Pentagon Shield Experiment. Since then REAL has also traveled to Dugway Proving Ground in Utah where it has demonstrated high sensitivity to low concentration of biological aerosols. In October of 2004, NCAR, DARPA, and ITT Industries formed a partnership to build an unattended and continuously operating REAL.