Requicha is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, where he directs the Programmable Automation Laboratory and the recently- formed Laboratory for Molecular Robotics. He joined USC in 1986, after thirteen years at the University of Rochester, where most recently he was the director of the Production Automation Project. He also has been a lecturer in physics at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, a lieutenant in the Portuguese Air Force, and a research scientist with NATO's SACLANT Research Center in La Spezia, Italy. Requicha is best known for his work on geometric modeling of 3-D solid objects. The theory and algorithms he developed are used in several solid modelers, including Rochester's PADL systems. These are disseminated widely, and several commercially available CAD/CAM systems have been built upon PADL-2.
Requicha was a college and high school Valedictorian, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. He has been an editor for the ACM Transactions on Graphics, the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, and other journals, and has served on numerous conference program committees. His current work is a blend of artificial intelligence and computational geometry, with an emphasis on spatial reasoning and its applications in intelligent systems for design and manufacturing. Specific topics include (1) tolerancing and geometric uncertainty, (2) automatic planning of manufacturing and inspection tasks, (3) automatic design of fixtures using modular components, and (4) molecular robotics and nanotechnology.