In the military, Stanley A. White worked with radio, radar, shoran, and electrical power plant technology. When he entered Purdue, he enrolled in electrical engineering and worked as a teaching assistant during the semester and at the Allison Division of General Motors during the summers. He completed his BSEE in 1957 and his MSEE two years later and accepted a position at Autonetics.

White returned to Purdue in 1961 as a North American Aviation Science-Engineering Fellow and completed his doctoral work in 1965, while continuing to consult with Autonetics on projects such as the Voyager trajectory and navigation requirements. Joining Rockwell's Engineering Research Center, he designed a MOS/LSI digital-filter-device family and worked on systems for the Voyager program. He directed research in applications of signal processing to speech and image processing and automatic target recognition. He also led a group of innovators in the development of "intelligent" signal processors.

White was awarded the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and was a 1991-1992 Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medallion in 1986 and was named a Purdue Distinguished Engineering Alumnus in 1988.

White holds more than three dozen patents and received the Rockwell International Corporation Meritorious Invention Award in 1989. A Fellow of both the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, White has taught in the University of California (UC) system since 1959. White is now an adjunct professor at UC-Irvine and the president of his own consulting firm.