Bruce Lusignan (born 1936) is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and a visiting professor at

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decades ...

. He earned his B.S.E.E ('58), M.S.E.E. ('59) and Ph.D. ('63) degrees from Stanford. In the early 1960s, he worked in

radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming f ...

at Stanford. He has been director of Stanford's Communication Satellite Planning Center and Stanford's Center for International Cooperation in Space. He has also owned a small company designing cellular phones and

pagers A pager (also known as a beeper or bleeper) is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknow ...

. His areas of specialization are

communications satellites A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a Radi ...

telephone switches telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...

cellular networks A cellular network or mobile network is a communication network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas called "cells", each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (typically thre ...

and the related

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniq ...

problems. He is inventor or co-inventor on 16 patents, including devices for metering power, RF signal reception, satellite transceivers, alarm systems for cellular base stations, tone generators for telephony, and VSAT terminals. He has worked on designs for reusable launch vehicles based on the

Black Horse Black is a hair coat color of horses in which the entire hair coat is black. Black is a relatively uncommon coat color, and it is not uncommon to mistake dark chestnuts or bays for black. True black horses have dark brown eyes, black skin, a ...

concept. and has helped direct planning efforts for international cooperation on Mars exploration with the then-

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. He led later post-Soviet cooperation in planning for an international Mars mission that included a

space logistics Space logistics is "the theory and practice of driving space system design for operability and supportability, and of managing the flow of materiel, services, and information needed throughout a space system lifecycle." It includes terrestrial lo ...

function for

ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons c ...

s: using missiles such as the SS-18 to pre-position fuel and other supplies in Earth orbit, and Russia's Energia booster to send the supplies to Mars ahead of the crew. Lusignan also takes a strong interest in the politics and issues that arise in economic development, including sustainable development in Africa, earthquake relief and reconstruction in Peru, and rural telecommunications in the Middle East. For a number of years he ran EDGE – "Ethics of Development in a Global Environment" – a weekly seminar at Stanford about issues in international conflict, trade, environmental sustainability, and amelioration of poverty and racism. In 1982, he was one of a number of professors who, with the support of their institutions, openly defied restrictions on use of otherwise-publicly available materials rationalized via the

Arms Export Control Act The Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (Title II of , codified at ) gives the President of the United States the authority to control the import and export of defense articles and defense services. The H.R. 13680 legislation was passed by the 94th ...

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lusignan, Bruce 1936 births Living people 20th-century American inventors 21st-century American inventors Stanford University alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Space advocates