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Biographical Information

 

Short Bio

Thomas Kailath received a B.E. (Telecom) degree in 1956 from the College of Engineering, Pune, India, and S.M. (1959) and Sc.D. (1961) degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, CA, before being appointed to Stanford University as Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1963. He was promoted to Professor in 1968, and appointed as the first holder of the Hitachi America Professorship in Engineering in1988. He assumed emeritus status in 2001, but remains active with his research and writing activities. He also held shorter-term appointments at several institutions around the world: UC Berkeley, Indian Statistical Institute, Bell Labs, Indian Institute of Science, Cambridge University, K. U. Leuven, T.U. Delft, Weizmann Institute, Imperial College, MIT, UCLA ,T. U. Munich.

His research and teaching have ranged over several fields of engineering and mathematics: information theory, communications, linear systems, estimation and control, signal processing, semiconductor manufacturing, probability and statistics, and matrix and operator theory. He has also co-founded and served as a director of several high-technology companies. He has mentored an outstanding array of over a hundred doctoral and postdoctoral scholars. Their joint efforts have led to over 300 journal papers, a dozen patents and several books and monographs, including the major textbooks: Linear Systems (1980) and Linear Estimation (2000).

He received the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2007 for “exceptional contributions to the development of powerful algorithms for communications, control, computing and signal processing.” Among other major honors are the Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society; the IEEE Education Medal and the IEEE Signal Processing Medal; the 2009 BBVA Foundation Prize for Information and Communication Technologies; the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award; election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; foreign membership of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences).

In November 2014, he received a US National Medal of Science from President Obama “for transformative contributions to the fields of information and system science, for distinctive and sustained mentoring of young scholars, and for translation of scientific ideas into entrepreneurial ventures that have had a significant impact on industry.”

Bio

Thomas Kailath received the B. E. (Telecom) degree from the College of Engineering, Pune, India in 1956 and M.S. and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959 and 1961. From October 1961 to December 1962, he was at the Digital Communications Division of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA, where he also held a visiting appointment at Caltech. He started at Stanford University in January 1963 as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, was promoted to Professor in 1968, and in 1988 was appointed the first holder of the Hitachi America Professorship in Engineering. He assumed emeritus status in 2001, but has been recalled to active duty to continue his research and writing activities.

At Stanford, Kailath served as Director of the Information Systems Laboratory during a decade of rapid growth from 1971 to 1981, and built it into a world-leading center for communications, control and signal processing research. He served on the Executive Committee of the department from 1971 to 1987 and as Associate Chair from 1981 to 1987. He was also twice elected to the Senate of the University.

His research and teaching at Stanford was remarkably wide-ranging. James Gibbons, then Stanford Dean of Engineering, wrote to Kailath on the occasion of his 60th birthday conference in 1995, “Your career has been an extraordinary success many times over, and for a different set of reasons each decade. I have never seen anything like it in 40 years of service at Stanford”.

Kailath’s research during the 1960s led to prize-winning papers on an algorithm for exploiting the availability of noiseless feedback and new techniques in signal-detection theory. In the 1970s, his work resulted in the influential textbook, Linear Systems (1980), and major contributions to estimation and control resulted in another major textbook, Linear Estimation (2000). In the 1980s, his groups focused on multiple antenna signal processing, the design of VLSI arrays for signal processing, and the development and application of the concept of displacement structure to design fast algorithms for many problems in engineering and mathematics. In the 1990s, they made notable contributions to smart antenna technology for wireless communications and to resolution enhancement techniques for optical lithography in semiconductor manufacturing. Over this period, he also made innovative contributions to stochastic processes, operator theory, and linear algebra.

Kailath’s entry into different fields was aided by his success in attracting a brilliant array of nearly a hundred doctoral and postdoctoral students from around the world, about half of whom are already IEEE Fellows. Their joint efforts have led to over 300 journal papers, a dozen patents, several high-technology companies and a number of books and monographs, including the major textbooks: Linear Systems(1980) and Linear Estimation(2000). For citations over 1980-2000, the ISI (Institute of Scientific Information) list of Highly Cited Authors listed Kailath in three categories: Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

In 2007, then Stanford Dean James Plummer was quoted in a Stanford article on Kailath’s winning the IEEE Medal of Honor as saying: “Many of us have met individuals who have made deep contributions in specific technical fields, or had a major impact on industry, or had a major impact on their academic discipline or educated the leaders of the future. Tom is essentially unique in that he has done all of these things at the very highest level.”

He has received many honors over the years, most recently the US National Medal of Science “for transformative contributions to the fields of information and system science, for distinctive and sustained mentoring of young scholars, and for translation of scientific ideas into entrepreneurial ventures that have had a significant impact on industry.”

Among his many other major awards are the IEEE Medal of Honor as well as its Education and Signal Processing Medals; Guggenheim, Churchill and Humboldt Fellowships; Honorary degrees from universities in several countries, most recently from the Technion in Israel; Membership of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Foreign membership of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Spanish Academy, and the four Indian National Science and Engineering Academies; the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award: and the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies.

Last modified 2/25/2016 - JD