School of City and Regional Planning

Nick Faust, a true rocket scientist, earned his BS in Physics (1969) and MS in Geophysics (1975) from GT. Over the years, Nick worked for GT and NASA and was elected to the Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1993 for his pioneering efforts in creating the ELAS image processing software. He was head of the Image Processing Branch at GTRI, resident scholar at CURA, and taught Remote Sensing in the College of Design for over 25 years. Though Nick passed away in 2021 at the age of 75, his legacy lives on at Georgia Tech.

While a student at Georgia Tech, he was a co-op with NASA and was employed by NASA after graduation. At NASA, Nick worked on the trajectory for the moon landing and the Grand Tour Mission. Nick was elected to the Space Technology Hall of Fame (1993) for his pioneering efforts in helping create the ELAS image processing software.

He was the co-founder of ERDAS Earth Resources Data Analysis Systems. They created digital image processing software mainly used for the study and analysis of satellite imagery.

Nick was the head of the Image Analysis and Visualization Branch Electro-Optics, Environment and Materials Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has served on a variety of scientific panels and committees. He was the co-chair of the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS)-Commission II Working Group on hardware and software aspects of GIS. He continued as a part-time professor and resident scholar at Georgia Tech after retirement.

Nick was president of the Dian Fossey Foundation. He made many trips to Rwanda, collaborating with the Fossey organization to map gorilla habitat for research and education purposes.