David H. Rogstad received a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1962, followed by an M.S. and a Ph.D., also in physics, from Caltech in 1967. His research was in radio astronomy, investigating the 21-cm neutral hydrogen emission from external galaxies. He continued this research for the next several years, both at Caltech and at the University of Gronigen in the Netherlands. In 1974, David joined the Tracking Systems and Applications Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he began his career working on the development of the instrumentation to use radio interferometric techniques for the navigation of deep-space probes, as well as for research in radio astronomy. These efforts resulted in the delivery of three separate very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) correlator processors of increasing speed and sophistication.

In the intervening years, David has led teams in the development of the hypercube concurrent supercomputers jointly with the Caltech campus, and in the development of antenna arraying for improved telemetry reception from deep-space probes. He has become an expert in the areas of data analysis, image processing, digital signal processing, correlator design, parallel processing, telemetry receivers, antenna arraying, and weak signal detection, the last three of which allowed him and his team to contribute to the saving of the Galileo Mission from its antenna failure.

David received numerous awards for his technical contributions to the NASA program, including a NASA Exceptional Service Medal for his contributions to antenna arraying. At his retirement in September of 2000, he was a principal engineer and a technical group supervisor at JPL.