“SVIPLA is pleased to announce its Inventor of the Year, Dr. Robert (“Bob”) Showen. He is SST’s founder and patent holder on its innovative ShotSpotter technology. With over three decades of acoustic and geophysics research experience, it was Dr. Showen’s initial vision of helping police curb gunfire and urban crime that caused him to conceive of ShotSpotter. He and several co-patent holders have had insights allowing this technology to assist law enforcement agencies in reducing gun violence.

Dr. Showen has been issued nine patents, with several patents pending, resulting from nearly two decades of innovation in the area of acoustic location technology.
Engineer, scientist, and teacher, he attended San Jose State University, University of California at Berkeley, and Rice University. He obtained degrees in electrical engineering and space physics and received a fellowship to the Max Planck Institute. He has taught astronomy and physics at the University of Puerto Rico, performed experiments to heat the ionosphere at the world’s largest radar in Arecibo Puerto Rico, participated in the development of over-the-horizon radar at SRI International, and studied the effects of lightning on the ionosphere.”