Thomas W. Parks is an American electrical engineer and Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. He is best known for his contributions to digital signal processing

Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...

, especially digital filter

Digital filter

In electronics, computer science and mathematics, a digital filter is a system that performs mathematical operations on a sampled, discrete-time signal to reduce or enhance certain aspects of that signal. This is in contrast to the other major type of electronic filter, the analog filter, which is...

 design and computation of the fast Fourier transform

Fast Fourier transform

A fast Fourier transform is an efficient algorithm to compute the discrete Fourier transform and its inverse. "The FFT has been called the most important numerical algorithm of our lifetime ." There are many distinct FFT algorithms involving a wide range of mathematics, from simple...

. His recent work is in the area of demosaicing

Demosaicing

A demosaicing algorithm is a digital image process used to reconstruct a full color image from the incomplete color samples output from an image sensor overlaid with a color filter array...

.

Academic career

Tom Parks received his bachelors in electrical engineering from Cornell in 1961. He worked for General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

 for two years, then returned to Cornell to earn his masters and PhD degrees. Upon graduation in 1967 he joined the electrical engineering faculty at Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

 in Houston, Texas

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

, where he began teaching and working in the nascent field of digital signal processing. In 1972 he and James McClellan published an influential paper

Parks-McClellan filter design algorithm

The Parks-McClellan algorithm, published by James McClellan and Thomas Parks in 1972, is an iterative algorithm for finding the optimal Chebyshev finite impulse response filter. The Parks-McClellan algorithm is utilized to design and implement efficient and optimal FIR filters...

 on digital filter design. Since 1986 Parks has been at Cornell. He has co-authored more than 150 books and papers.

Affiliations and awards

• Senior Fulbright fellowship
  Fulbright Program
  The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
  
   (1973)
• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
  Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
  The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is a foundation set-up by the government of the Federal Republic and funded by the German Foreign Office, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and others for the promotion of international co-operation...
  
   Senior Scientist Award (1973)
• IEEE Signal Processing Society's
  IEEE Signal Processing Society
  The IEEE Signal Processing Society is a society of the IEEE. It is also known by the acronym IEEE SPS. In the hierarchy of IEEE, the Signal Processing Society is one of close to 40 technical societies organized under the IEEE's Technical Activities Board...
  
   Technical Achievement Award (1980)
• Life Fellow
  IEEE Fellow
  An IEEE member is elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for "unusual distinction in the profession and shall be conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest"...
  
  , IEEE (1982)
• Third Millennium Medal of the IEEE 2000
• IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal
  IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal
  The IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal is presented "for outstanding achievements in signal processing" theory, technology or commerce. The recipients of this award will receive a gold medal, together with a replica in bronze, a certificate and a honorarium.The award was established in...
  
   (2004), together with James H. McClellan
  James H. McClellan
  James H. McClellan is the Byers Professor of Signal Processing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is widely known for his creation of the McClellan transform and for his co-authorship of the Parks-McClellan filter design algorithm.- Education :...
  
  
• National Academy of Engineering
  National Academy of Engineering
  The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
  
  (2010)