Prof.
Farouk El-Baz
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DRI to award 2004 Nevada Medal to Boston University remote sensing scientist Farouk El-Baz
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Prof.
Farouk El-Baz |
The Desert Research Institute will award the 2004 Nevada Medal to Boston University scientist Farouk El-Baz, a veteran of NASA’s Apollo Program and a pioneer in the study of Earth from space, DRI President Dr. Stephen G. Wells announced. Wells said Dr. El-Baz, a research professor and director of BU's widely regarded Center for Remote Sensing, is particularly renown for his contributions to the understanding of the origin and evolution of desert landforms.
Dr. El-Baz will formally receive the award at Nevada Medal Dinners at the Reno Hilton on March 9, and at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on March 11. He will present the Nevada Medal Lectures at DRI in Reno on March 10, and at DRI in Las Vegas March 11. The Nevada Medal, presented annually by DRI since 1988, includes a $20,000 honorarium and minted silver medal provided by the shareholders of SBC.
“Prof. El-Baz pioneered the use of satellite images to characterize arid landforms worldwide,” Wells said. “His research defined the role of alternating wet and dry climate cycles in desert regions and identified the forces that control the accumulation of ground water in these regions.” El-Baz’ present research involves the analysis of satellite images to evaluate ground water potential in arid tracts in eastern Arabia, particularly in the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
El-Baz led NASA's program to select landing sites for the Apollo moon missions more than 30 years ago. The impact of his work there has been acknowledged in popular culture as well as scientific. While in lunar orbit in the summer of 1971, Apollo 15 command module pilot Alfred Worden commented, “I feel like I've been here before," due to the intense preparation by El-Baz. The TV series "From the Earth to the Moon," produced by Tom Hanks for HBO, featured El-Baz’ role in the training of the Apollo astronauts in a segment entitled: "The Brain of Farouk El-Baz." In the popular 1990s television series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a shuttlecraft prominently used in the program was named “El-Baz” in his honor.
An Egyptian native, El-Baz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 for his role in the Apollo missions and for pioneering methods of discovering groundwater from space. El-Baz received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Missouri in 1964, and began working on NASA's Apollo Program in 1967 after teaching in Egypt and Germany. He remained with the Apollo Program until it concluded in 1972.
“With many national and international awards, nearly 600 publications and presentations—including a dozen books— Farouk El-Baz has touched and influenced an extraordinarily broad segment of the science community as well as the general public,” Wells notes. “As America looks to the moon and Mars with fresh interest, expect Farouk El-Baz to be in the forefront of exploratory efforts.”
Before he joined Boston University in 1986, El-Baz worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to establish and direct the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum. He also continued his work with NASA, first as principal investigator of the Earth Observations and Photography Experiment on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project—the first joint American-Soviet space mission in July 1975—emphasizing the imaging of arid environments from space. He later worked to develop applications for using remote sensing data obtained with the Space Shuttle's Large Format Camera.
He also served as Science Advisor to Anwar Sadat, the late president of Egypt, working to identify environmentally sustainable areas in the Egyptian desert to allow its growing population to expand out of the Nile River Valley. He later used his analytical techniques to assess environmental damage to arid environments in Kuwait immediately following the Gulf War in 1991. His publications on that project are regarded as a definitive body of work for satellite observations of arid environments.
In 1999, the Geological Society of America established the "Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Research," an annual award that acknowledges excellence in arid land studies. Two DRI scientists, DRI President Wells, a geomorphologist, and sand dune specialist Dr. Nick Lancaster, have been recipients of the GSA honor. El-Baz was also elected as a trustee of the DRI Research Foundation in 2002.
A nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale. Nearly 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct some 150 research projects at DRI annually. More than 85 percent of DRI's annual $37 million operating budget consists of research grants and contracts obtained by its scientists. The balance is received from the state of Nevada for administrative costs.
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