Rui de Figueiredo

Rui J.P. de Figueiredo served as professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science, and mathematics at the University of California, Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1959. Early in his career, he headed the Applied Mathematics and Physics Division of the Portuguese Atomic Energy Commission, representing Portugal at international conferences and scientific exchanges. After moving to the United States in 1961, he joined Purdue University and then Rice University, where he was professor of electrical engineering and mathematical sciences for 25 years from 1965. In 1990, he became professor of electrical engineering and computer science and mathematics at UC Irvine for 17 years, establishing signal processing as a prominent research area, founding and directing the Laboratory for Intelligent Signal Processing and Communications, and continuing as a Calit2 affiliate after retiring in 2007.

De Figueiredo’s research focused on mathematical foundations of linear and nonlinear problems in pattern recognition, signal and image processing, and neural networks. He invented generalized spline filters, including Butterworth and Chebyshev types, for dynamical-source-model-based recovery of analog signals from linear observations and generalized symmetric Fock space to reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces for input-output maps of nonlinear dynamical systems, applied in telecommunications, biomedical engineering, and machine intelligence. He authored approximately 400 publications, including three books, 17 book chapters, and 380 papers in archival journals and proceedings. His contributions supported NASA space exploration, Department of Defense weapons detection, credit card fraud identification, EPA oil spill detection, mobile telecommunications efficiency, geophysical well-logging images, and early detection of neural diseases like Alzheimer’s. A Life Fellow of the IEEE and past President of the International Society of Circuits and Systems, he received the George V. Chilingar Medal of Honor (2007), P. L. Kapitsa Gold Medal (2009), Golomb/Chilingar Giants of Science and Engineering Medal of Honor (2010), Gh. Asachi Medal, and IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Award.