Kailath Named Foreign Member of the Royal Society

 IEEE Spectrum 2007

Thomas Kailath, IEEE Life Fellow and IEEE Signal Processing Society member, has been elected to The Royal Society as a Foreign Member.  Kailath is Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University (CA, USA).  Prof. Kailath has received numerous awards from IEEE and from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, including the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal (2006) and the IEEE Medal of Honor (2007) -- the highest IEEE award.

Prof. Kailath has gained recognition, worldwide, in diverse fields.  His accomplishments include a striking capacity-achieving algorithm for channels with feedback; innovations processes and martingale theory; the structure of likelihood ratios for signal detection; high-resolution direction-finding algorithms; the concept of displacement structure and its many applications; and resolution-enhancement techniques in optical lithography.  He is the author of classical texts and has mentored a large number of doctoral and post-doctoral scholars.  Successful transitions of his ideas were often achieved through companies founded by, or co-founded with his students. The May 2007 issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine featured Dr. Kailath on its cover and an in-depth interview.

The Royal Society represents, for the UK and the Commonwealth, what the National Academy of Sciences represents for the US.  It is an independent, scientific organization dedicated to the promotion of scientific excellence.  Each year, the Royal Society elects only 44 new Fellows and eight new Foreign Members chosen on the basis of scientific, engineering, or technological excellence.