Anantha Chandrakasan named recipient of 2022 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Award

Anantha Chandrakasan, Dean of the MIT School of Engineering and Vannevar Bush Professor of EECS, has been named the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal. In the award citation, the IEEE noted Chandrakasan’s “contributions to ultralow-power circuits and systems, and leadership in academia and advancing diversity in the profession.”

Anantha Chandrakasan received B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989, 1990, and 1994, respectively. He joined the MIT faculty in 1994. Additionally, Chandrakasan serves as co-chair of the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT- Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology, and chair of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium.

He was the Director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. From July 2011 through June 2017, he served as Department Head of MIT EECS, during which time he spearheaded a number of initiatives that opened opportunities for students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. These programs include: “SuperUROP,” a year-long independent research program that provides tools for students to do publication-quality research; the Rising Stars program, an annual event that convenes graduate and postdoc women for the purpose of sharing advice about the early stages of an academic career; and StartMIT, an independent activities period (IAP) class, which provides students and postdocs the opportunity to learn from and interact with industrial innovation leaders.

Chandrakasan is a recipient of multiple awards including the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, the UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017, and the 2019 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Service Award. He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip.  In 2015, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and in 2019, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Chandrakasan is an ACM Fellow, as well as an IEEE Fellow who has served in various roles for the IEEE ISSCC, including Program Chair, Signal Processing Sub-committee Chair, and Technology Directions Sub-committee Chair; was the Conference Chair of ISSCC from 2010 through 2018. He serves as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Conference starting ISSCC 2019.

Chandrakasan leads the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group, whose research projects have addressed security hardware, energy harvesting, and wireless charging for the internet of things; energy-efficient circuits and systems for multimedia processing; and platforms for ultra-low-power biomedical electronics. He is a co-author of Low Power Digital CMOS Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), Digital Integrated Circuits (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2003, 2nd edition), and Sub-threshold Design for Ultra-Low Power Systems (Springer 2006). From 2016-2021, he served on the Board of The Engine, an accelerator launched by MIT to support startup companies working on scientific and technological innovation with the potential for transformative societal impact. He currently serves on the Board of Analog Devices Inc., the SMART Governing Board, and the Board of Trustees of the Perkins School for the Blind.

Named in honor of the late MIT Institute Professor and Professor Emerita of Physics and Electrical Engineering Mildred Dresselhaus, whose innovations helped mold the history of advancements in science, technology, and education around the world, the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal is given annually in recognition of outstanding technical contributions in science and engineering that are of great impact to IEEE’s fields of interest.