Dr. Richard A. Scheper

Scheper graduated from Calvert Hall College High School (Md.), and transferred from the Honors program at then-Essex Community College to earn his B.S. (magna cum laude), M.S., and Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland, College Park. His area of research was in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) plasma theory; his graduate studies focused on refining boundary conditions for MHD fluid simulations of the solar corona and terrestrial magnetosphere.

After graduating, Scheper began work as a contractor at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he helped refine and improve the performance of programs running on supercomputers simulating global biological cycles of phytoplankton in the earth’s oceans.

From there, Scheper moved on to the Naval Research Laboratory. As a government civilian, he focused on signal processing and information theory with an emphasis on devising algorithms to detect Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) radar signals using exotic waveforms. He also devised a general scheme to calculate the theoretical performance bounds for the non-cooperative detection of arbitrary FM signals.

Scheper then became a contractor working in support of the United States intelligence community and Department of Defense as a systems engineer and program manager, overseeing the development of new technologies and techniques in pursuit of signals intelligence missions.

In September 2009, Scheper founded Jovian Concepts Inc. As of 2019, Jovian Concepts had more than 70 employees in Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and Japan.

Scheper has previously served on the board of directors of the American Red Cross Central Maryland Chapter, on the Board of the Falls Road Community Association, and as education chair on the board of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association. He has also served as an adjunct instructor at CCBC, teaching Honors Physics.