John Walkup

The biggest thing in my life happened my junior year in high school when I attended a church youth retreat on an island near Seattle. I learned that I could have a "personal relationship" with God through trusting in His Son, Jesus Christ. The gospel message was explained to me that afternoon and I put my trust in Jesus for salvation from the penalty of my disobedience toward God. Initially I continued to work toward human achievement which I achieved, without experiencing significant happiness. When I entered graduate school I met my wife and learned how to really study the Bible. God grew me spiritually in those years and by His grace I received my Ph.D. and was offered a faculty position at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. I would also share, on the first day of every class I taught, that my life really revolved around my relationship with Jesus Christ. That simple declaration of my faith opened many doors to being used by God over my 27 year career, from students requesting to work in my laboratory to becoming my graduate students in our Optical Systems Laboratory, to international ministry trips to places like the Soviet Union/Russia, Kosovo, Taiwan, China and Poland. I retired early in 1998 and moved to the West Coast to minister to faculty at the Bay Area campuses through being a campus minister as part of the staff of Faculty Commons/Cru. In summary, by putting my trust in Jesus Christ at that youth retreat in 1957, God entered my life and opened doors for service which went well beyond anything I could ever have imagined. He clearly deserves any and all the glory for my students and any awards I have received. He is indeed faithful and good!!

My Life

Favorite Quote

"He is no fool who gives up what he can't keep (his life) for what he can't lose (eternal life with Jesus Christ in God's Heaven)."Jim Elliot prior to his death as a martyr along with four other men who died taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Auca Indians in the jungles of South America in the 1950's.

Friends describe me

A guy who loves to eat....anytime...almost anything!

My hobbies

reading, walking, traveling, playing with my grandkids

Fantasy dinner guests

Michael Faraday, Eric Liddle, John the Apostle,

Best advice I ever received

My dad suggested I propose to my first wife! Fortunately I did!

My undergrad alma mater

Dartmouth College

My worst subject in school

mechanical drawing

In college I drove

1957 TR-3 ( in graduate school; scholarship students couldn't drive cars when I was an undergraduate.)

If I weren't a professor, I would

Be a physician or a sports writer for ESPN

Favorite books

Bible (New Living Translation), The Divine Conspiracy (Willard), Mere Christianity (Lewis)

Favorite movies

Chariots of Fire, Rudy,

Favorite city

Seattle or Boston; I have loved living in Danville and Pleasanton, CA-both small cities in the East Bay of San Francisco, CA.

Favorite coffee

Peets French Roast

Nobody knows I

I sang with the Dartmouth Glee Club (but only for the home concerts; I wasn't good enough for the traveling squad)

My latest accomplishment

I skied at Beaver Creek, CO after 30 years of not skiing. Fortunately God spared my life and I haven't skied since!

Current Research

From 1971-1998 my students, faculty colleagues and I established the Optical Systems Lab in the Texas Tech University Department of Electrical Engineering. Our research covered several areas of modern optics, including optical information processing/optical computing, optical neural networks,' and image processing in images degraded by sources of signal-dependent noise such as film grain noise, tape noise, and Poisson shot noise at low light levels.