Rui de Figueiredo

Timeline

1. 1929–1959

   Goa, MIT and Harvard

   Born in Panjim, Goa, in 1929, he earns bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at MIT in 1950 and 1952. A doctorate in applied mathematics at Harvard follows in 1959.

2. 1959–1965

   Atomic energy in Portugal, then Purdue

   After the doctorate, he heads the Applied Mathematics and Physics Division of the Portuguese Atomic Energy Commission for two years. In 1962, he returns to the United States as an associate professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University.

3. 1965–1990

   Professor at Rice

   In 1965, he joins Rice University in Houston as a full professor jointly appointed in electrical and computer engineering and applied mathematics, and he stays for 25 years. Rice doctorates under his supervision include John Bennett in 1974, Lubomyr Zyla in 1977, Lynn Wilcox in 1978 and Sergei Fogel in 1981.

4. 1971–1998

   Fock space and neural networks

   In 1971, he publishes "Optimal spline digital simulators of analog filters" with A. N. Netravali in IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory, as part of bringing generalised splines for optimal signal recovery into signal processing. His Generalised Fock space, a reproducing kernel Hilbert space of input-output maps of nonlinear dynamical systems, supports optimal recovery of those maps from data, and the approach leads to his Optimal Interpolation and CDL neural networks. In 1998, he publishes "A new neural network for cluster detection and labeling" with T. Eltoft in IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks.

5. 1986–1991

   Object recognition and photometric stereo

   His 1986 paper with B. Bamieh in the IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation presents a moment-invariants and attributed-graph method for 3D object recognition from a single image. In 1991, he publishes a theory of photometric stereo for diffuse, non-Lambertian surfaces with H. D. Tagare in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

6. 1990–2007

   Professor at UC Irvine

   He joins UC Irvine in 1990 as a professor of electrical and computer engineering and mathematics, and founds its Laboratory for Intelligent Signal Processing and Communications. As a faculty member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, he helps establish signal processing as a research area at UCI. After retiring in 2007, he continues his research as a Calit2 affiliate with an office in the Calit2 Building.

7. 2002–2009

   Van Valkenburg and Kapitsa medals

   The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society gives him its Mac Van Valkenburg Society Award in 2002. In 2007, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences elects him a foreign member of its U.S. Section and awards him the George V. Chilingar Medal of Honor, and in 2009 it awards him its P. L. Kapitsa Gold Medal.

8. 2013

   Death in College Station

   He dies in 2013 in College Station, Texas, at age 84, after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. At his death, he holds the title of professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science, and of mathematics, at UC Irvine.