In Memoriam: David H. Staelin

Abstract

David H. Staelin, a Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Research Laboratory of Electronics, died November 10 of cancer. He was 73. Staelin joined the MIT faculty in 1965, conducting research in radio astronomy. Among his first accomplishments, he developed in 1968 a computationally efficient algorithm that enabled him to co-discover the Crab Nebula Pulsar, helping confirm the existence of neutron stars predicted by theoretical physics. Over time, Staelin's interests expanded to include remote sensing for climate monitoring, a field to which he brought a strong command of electromagnetics, signal-processing methodology, and computational trends. Among many examples of his leadership in this field, he was principal investigator in the development of the first two Earth-orbiting microwave-imaging spectrometers, launched in 1975 for mapping global temperature and humidity through clouds. He was also a co-investigator on the 1977 NASA Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft missions, studying nonthermal radio emission from the outer planets. Staelin received the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Distinguished Achievement Award in 1996. Starting in 1998, he co-developed techniques using operational millimeter-wave sounding satellites for more frequent and complete mapping of global precipitation. In recent years, Staelin turned his attention to diverse emerging problems requiring sophisticated signal processing and estimation theory. These included the development of practical image- and video-compression technology, advanced methodologies for data-rich manufacturing problems, heterogeneous and wireless communication architectures, and, most recently, neuronal computational models.