Top Egyptian scientist elected to NAE
Egypt, People, 3/25/2002

Farouk El-Baz, research professor and founding director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Membership of the academy honours engineers and other professionals who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice" or have shown unusual accomplishment in fields of technology.

Dr El-Baz first gained international attention for his work on the Apollo programme, when he served as secretary of the lunar landing site selection committee, chairman of the astronaut training group, and principal investigator for visual observations and photography.

A native of Egypt, he later served as a science advisor to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and to King Hussein of Jordan. He is also a pioneer in the development of remote sensing.

After the Apollo programme, Dr El-Baz worked for over a decade at the National Air and Space Museum and then at Itek Optical Systems of Lexington Massachusetts.

In 1986 he joined Boston University as a director of the Center for Remote Sensing which NASA has designated a "Center of Excellence". Under his leadership the center has been the forefront of applying space technology to many fields of study that traditionally were earthbound, including archeological investigations and assessment of environmental changes .

His election to the NAE was for selecting the landing sites for the Apollo missions and for his pioneering methods of discovering subsurface freshwater from space observations.

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