Paul Cannon is a physicist and an electronic engineer who works at the interface of the two disciplines. He is an academic at the University of Birmingham in the UK but spent the majority of his working life in government research laboratories and industry. Since joining the University of Birmingham in 2013, he has been a regular advisor to government departments and science advisors. His leadership of studies and authorship of reports on extreme space weather have guided the development of government policy in both Australia and the UK.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2003, appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 and served as the President of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) from 2014 to 2017. In 2023 he was awarded the Rawer Gold Medal by URSI.
Professor Cannon has made numerous contributions to radio science and space weather especially in the fields of ionospheric radio propagation and measurement and real-time modelling of the ionosphere. He has specialised in combining knowledge of radio systems with knowledge of the ionospheric medium and radio propagation to develop new and novel science and engineering solutions.