Richard A. White

Senior Research Associate, Earth System Science Center



Dr. White is actively involved in developing algorithms and software for preprocessing and analyzing remotely sensed imagery in combination with other surface characteristics data and model outputs. He is also building tools for creating, maintaining, and accessing a hierarchical database containing datasets at widely diverse scales, ranging from global coverages down to regions of a few square kilometers.

Education and Professional Experience

Dr. White received the B.A. in Physics from Oberlin College and the Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Wisconsin. He served as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Physics at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda from 1963 through 1969. His involvement in designing and implementing software systems for processing remotely sensed imagery began in 1969, when he joined Computer Sciences Corporation, a contractor supporting NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. White came to Penn State in 1989, initially with the Office for Remote Sensing of Earth Resources, moving to the Earth System Science Center in 1994.

Honors and Awards

1986 NASA Group Achievement Award to the Developers of the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP).

1979 NASA/JSC Group Achievement Award to the GSFC Support Team for the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE).

Professional Activities

Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Member, American Physical Society
Member, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Member, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society

Selected Publications

Miller, D.A. and R.A. White, "A Conterminous United States Multi-Layer Soil Characteristics Data Set for Regional Climate and Hydrology Modeling" (Submitted to Earth Interactions, 1997).

White, R.A. and D.A. Miller, "Processing Soil Survey Information With Perl" (Submitted to Computers and Geosciences, 1997.

Lakhtakia, M.N., D.A. Miller, R.A. White, and C.B. Smith, "GIS as an integrative tool in climatologic and hydrologic modeling," Proceedings of the Second International Conference/Workshop on Integrating Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling, September 26-30, 1993, Breckenridge, Colorado .

White, R.A., "Data Structures for Implementing the CLASSY Algorithm on the MPP," in Potter, J.L., ed., The Massively Parallel Procesor, pp. 31-61, The MIT Press, 1985.

White, R.A., "Inversion of Positive Definite Matrices on the MPP," in Potter, J.L., ed., The Massively Parallel Procesor, pp. 7-30, The MIT Press, 1985.


Dr. White can be reached via email at raw@essc.psu.edu