Frank E. Barber graduated A.B. in 1966 from Dartmouth College and finished his M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University in 1969. In 1976, he obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical & Biomedical Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle. His major area of study was on Electromagnetic Fields and Waves.
After graduation in 1966, Barber was staff associate for 5 years at the Bioengineering Department, Forsyth Dental Institute, Boston. At that time he worked with Dr. Sidney Lees and founded the first Bioengineering Program in dental research. He developed ultra-high resolution ultrasound transducers for non-destructive testing and worked on the measurements of ultrasonic properties of hard dental tissues.
Between 1970 and 1975 he worked as graduate engineer at the Center for Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle. There he worked with the Donald Baker team in conceiving, designing and developing for clinical use the first Duplex pulsed-echo, pulsed-Doppler systems in ultrasonic diagnosis. They also coined the term "Duplex Ultrasound". He was also principal Investigator for the duplex Doppler projects for the Cardiovascular Instrumentation Research and Development Program. Barber also developed computer methods for three dimensional mapping of ultrasonic images of the heart and performed and published the first measurements to characterize scattering from atherosclerotic plaques. During his time at the University of Washington, he finished His Ph.D. dissertation which was on "Ultrasonic Microprobe: for modeling and measuring the angle distribution of echoes from diseased arterial tissues".
In 1975 he moved on to the Harvard Medical School, Department of Radiology; with staff appointments at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. In 1980, he became assistant Professor of Radiology (Physics), and help founded the Harvard Medical School's Ultrasound Physics Program. There he collaborated in clinical research: hyperthermia, cardiology and cardiovascular disease, cancer research and went on to develop the Scanning Acoustic Microprobe (SCAMP) which was a unique echo sampling and Fourier reconstruction methods for imaging fine scale tissue structure. He was recipient of major National Heart Lung & Blood Institute contracts for ultrasonic detection and characterization of atherosclerotic lesions.
Between 1984 and 1985 he worked for Elscint Inc., Boston, and was senior scientist and director of their ultrasound probe research and development section. He looked after new production prototypes, manufacturing methods; production and quality control planning, phased and linear array transducers protocols, pulsed-Doppler, duplex instruments for vascular and cardiovascular diagnosis and procedures for FDA regulatory compliance. In 1989 Barber became Affiliate Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington and in 1991, he moved on to work as Senior Technology Analyst at Pfizer Inc. where he monitored research technology and management, and new product acquisition and development at Pfizer's Medical Devices subsidiaries. He also developed technology analysis and transfer program between Pfizer and David Sarnoff Research Center, Princeton, in areas of optics and electro-optics, and micromachine and nanomachine technology.
During his career, Barbar had lectured at many academic institutions and held various consultating assignments with ultrasound manufactuers such as the Advanced Technology Laboratories, Inc., the A.D. Little Company, Inc., Technicare Ultrasound, Johnson & Johnson Company, Elscint, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Hospital Products Group and the New York Institute of Technology. He received the Research Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health in 1980 and the Distinguished Lecturer award from the IEEE Group on Sonics and Ultrasonics in 1982. Barber is also a member of Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Zi. He has over 50 publications; has served as consultant to over 25 national and international corporations; and has served on boards and committees of several professional societies.
Barber now owns and operates a publishing and general commercial printing company in Vermont. In 2004, He took up appointment as Senior Scientist at the Jamie Whitten National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA) and heads up the Biomedical Acoustics program. The principal focus of his research at NCPA is the development of high intensity focused ultrasound for noninvasive diagnosis and treatment of internal hemorrhage in combat casualty care.