Boston University Professor Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing, received the “Most Influential Alumnus” award from Missouri University of Science and Technology in a celebration on Saturday, according to a Nov. 10 press release.
El-Baz has received awards for his research on desert lands and groundwater resources in those environments, the press release said.
An alumnus of Missouri S&T, he was also given the “Alumni Achievement Award for Extraordinary Scientific Accomplishments” in 1972, an honorary Professional Degree in 2002 and a Doctor of Engineering in 2004.
A former NASA scientist and an adjunct professor of geology, El-Baz joined BU in 1986 to establish the Center, where he researched archeology, geography and geology using space technology, according to his faculty biography.
El-Baz received a silver Nevada Medal and $20,000 from the Desert Research Institute in 2004 for his research on groundwater in deserts, according to an article in The Daily Free Press published in February 2004.
In a 2008 interview with The DFP after the U.N. decided to fund his project, El-Baz said he drew a proposal to build more than 1,000 wells in Darfur, where he said he had found an underground “megalake.” The United Nations agreed to fund the project, which El-Baz said would be built by locals and overseen by himself.
“The war actually started because of shortages of water,” El-Baz said in the interview. “During the last 20 years, there was much less rain than usual.”
When the new Egyptian government formed last spring, El-Baz proposed a construction plan that would create highways, pipelines and power lines to accommodate the country’s surging population, he said in another interview with The DFP last March.
“[Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat] appointed me in 1978 as science advisor and I began to study Egypt’s deserts,” El-Baz said to The DFP. “My geological work as assisted by increasingly advanced satellite image data resulted in the proposed plan.”
At the celebration, El-Baz gave a lecture at the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering on the “Pursuit of Excellence: The Apollo Experience.”
El-Baz is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, according to the press release.
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