Thomas W. Parks
- Associated organizations
- Cornell University
- Fields of study
- Signal processing
- Awards
- IEEE Signal Processing Society's Technical Achievement Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Senior Scientist Award
Biography
Working together and individually, Doctors Thomas W. (Tom) Parks and James H. (Jim) McClellan have profoundly impacted digital signal processing. In the early 1970s, while Dr. McClellan was a graduate student at Rice University in Houston, Texas, they collaborated to apply the Remez exchange algorithm to the Chebyshev filter design problem and produce the Parks-McClellan algorithm. The resulting program remains the standard for designing linear-phase finite impulse response (FIR) digital filters and is widely used in areas such as communications, signal processing and array design. Dr. McClellan's Ph.D. thesis introduced the McClellan transformation, which simplifies the design of 2-D filters used in image and seismic processing for oil exploration.
In 1986, Dr. Parks joined Cornell University as a professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, after spending 19 years in this capacity at Rice University. An IEEE Fellow, his previous honors include the IEEE Signal Processing Society's Technical Achievement Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Senior Scientist Award, and an IEEE Third Millennium Medal.
He has served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Both he and Dr. McClellan made key contributions to the widely respected textbook 'Computer-Based Exercises in Signal Processing:Using MATLAB 5.'
Further Reading