Charles Asshur Al Wadad Elachi was born on April 18, 1947 in the small village of Riyaq in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.
Elachi has been at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 42 years. He came to Caltech in 1968 to earn his PhD in electrical sciences and started working at JPL in 1970. He was appointed director on May 1, 2001. “I left Lebanon when I was 17. I then travelled to France and later to the US to pursue my eductaion. It has been a roller coaster ride.”
After graduating from high school in Lebanon, Elachi studied physics at the University of Grenoble in France, before attaining an M.A. and a doctorate in electrical sciences from the California Institute of Technology. This is when he joined JPL as part-time staff, while he was still a student.
Among his many academic achievements, Elachi holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California, including professorships in electrical engineering and planetary science at Caltech.
He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lebanese American University (LAU) and a key figure on the advisory boards of King Fahd University and King Abdulla University — Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Elachi has been a principal investigator on a number of research and development studies and flight projects sponsored by NASA.
He has authored more than 230 publications on active microwave remote sensing and electromagnetic theory, and holds several patents in those fields. In 1988, the Los Angeles Times selected him as one of Southern California’s rising stars who will make a difference in LA. In 1989, asteroid 1982 SU was renamed 4116 Elachi in recognition of his contribution to planetary exploration.
