Dr. Russell embraces Electrical Engineering as his profession and historic trail research as his avocation. Associated with Iowa State University since August, 1984, Dr. Russell is currently an Associate Professor in Communications and Information Systems Security.  Prior to joining the faculty at Iowa State, he was a Principal Engineer at King Radio Corporation, Olathe, Kansas, 1980-1984.    From 1976 to 1980, he worked as a Research and Development Engineer at Rockwell Collins Avionics in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. While at Rockwell, Dr. Russell worked with the design team that pioneered the high antijam NAVSTAR Global Positioning System User Equipment.  From 1970 to 1976, he held various positions as a private consultant, an instructor at Iowa State, and a full-time member of the technical staff in the Physics Research Center at the University of Iowa.  He was an RF design engineer at Collins Radio Company, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, from 1966 to 1970.  He received the BSEE degree in 1966 from Montana State University and the MSEE (1973) and PhDEE (1978) degrees from Iowa State.

 Since 1984, he has been very active in scholarly research on historic trails in Montana and Idaho.

Steve began his avocation of pioneer trail research in 1984. His initial interest in the Native American trails followed by Lewis and Clark eventually expanded to include all the major pioneer trails of western Montana and northern Idaho. For the 1989 Montana Statehood Centennial Year, he prepared map displays for the Meagher County Historical Association, the Bitter Root Historical Society, and St. Mary's Mission. His centennial story, "Traveling the Carroll Trail," appeared in the June 1, 1989 edition of the Meagher County News and received an award for Best Single Centennial Story in the Montana Better Newspaper Contest.

He has concentrated most of his research efforts on the Lolo Trail System, which encompasses the trail treads now known as the Northern Nez Perce Trail, the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Nii-Mi-Poo Trail, the Bird-Truax Trail, and the Virginia City & Lewiston Wagon Road. Steve has a strong bond with Idaho and Montana, having been born in Lewiston, Idaho and spent growing years there. In Idaho, he lived at Weippe, Orofino, and Lochsa Lodge near Powell. In Montana, he lived in Victor and Stevensville in the Bitter Root Valley, and at White Sulphur Springs. As part of a logging family, Steve had to move frequently, changing schools ten times before graduating at White Sulphur. While attending Montana State, he worked two summers as a logger and two summers for the Forest Service at White Sulphur.

Steve's goal has been to precisely locate the extant trail treads and accurately document their location and existence. He has pioneered the creation of proprietary research methods, which involve computer analysis of archival records, map and navigation analysis, and field exploration. These new methods have been made possible by his knowledge of engineering research methods and hypergeometric theory. During many years of field work he has taken hundreds of photographs of the trail treads and various sites along the trail.

Today, Steve's involvement with the Lolo Trail system and the Lewis and Clark Trail has expanded to include assisting public and private agencies in their management and preservation planning for the cultural resources associated with the trails and their treads. He is also involved in planning and presenting workshops on the Lewis and Clark Trail and Lolo Trail. Steve is a past president of the Nez Perce National Historic Trail Foundation and a member of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

His professional engineering experience and interests lie in the general areas of communication systems, digital signal processing (DSP), Global Positioning System (GPS), and radio frequency (RF) design. He teaches courses in circuits, filters, communication systems theory, DSP, spread spectrum, spectral analysis, and statistical communications theory. His current research interests are spread spectrum, wireless security, and DSP techniques applied to radio communications and acoustics. He has also done research in image processing and digital filter design theory. His sponsored research has been with RCA/GE, Rockwell International, Texas Instruments, Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE), and Center for Advanced Technology Development. While at ISU, he taught over forty courses and twenty labs and design projects. His research efforts produced twenty-five grants and twenty-eight papers. As a thesis research advisor, Steve has seen four of his Ph.D. students and twenty-six of his Masters students graduate and begin their professional careers.

As a Senior Engineer in the Avionics Division of Rockwell Collins, Steve played a key roll in the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System program. He developed the statistical theory and performance analysis of the acquisition algorithms for the high antijam receiver design in the Phase I GPS, the General Development Model (GDM). He also collaborated on the analysis and simulation of the tracking statistics. He was project engineer for receiver integration testing on the GDM. He led the Phase IIA manpack red team and had critical responsibility for the product design. His expertise in antijam receiving system design was recognized in a monograph prepared for use by system designers. He was the first project manager of the Surface Vehicle Navigation System program with General Motors which was the first civil application of GPS at Rockwell.

In his position as the First Principal Engineer and Lab Leader at King Radio Corporation, Olathe, Kansas, he worked on advanced navigation and communication system design, signal processing analysis, high precision TCXO design and manufacturing, development of microprocessor support software, software configuration management, software quality assurance, and software certification. While completing graduate school at ISU, he was a self-employed consulting engineer and a full time instructor in circuits and electronics at ISU's Engineering Technology Institute. He also worked full time for over a year as a research engineer in the Physics Research Center, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa. Iowa City, Iowa, where he designed systems for satellite communications and solar flare research.

Early in his career he did RF circuit design as a design engineer in the Front End Group of the Telecommunications Division at Collins Radio Corporation, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He worked primarily on low noise receiver filters, amplifiers, and frequency translators used in VHF and UHF applications such as aircraft transponders and the TACSATCOM program.

Dr. Russell is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing, where he is a past Chair of the Iowa section. He served as student branch advisor for the Central Iowa Section of IEEE. He is also a member of Sigma XI and is a registered professional engineer in the State of Iowa.