N. Thomas Gaarder was born in La Crosse Wisconsin, on February 17, 1939. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1961, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, Cal. in 1962 and 1965, respectively.
From 1963 to 1965 he worked as a Research Engineer for the Communication Laboratory of Stanford University--Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, CA, where he was engaged in the modeling of time-varying channels and the analysis of communication systems. From 1965 to 1967 he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca , NY. Since 1967 he has been at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he is currently a full professor.
Dr Gaarder is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and the IEEE.
His research interests are in the area of communication and information theory with particular emphasis on multi-user communications.