My Biography
Until July 2009 I was a design engineer / industrial researcher with over 18 years of diverse experience in microelectronics and communication systems. I concentrated on large system-on-chip (SoC) designs for wireless applications but my prior involvement also included analog, RF, mixed-signal and digital designs. I have also acquired communication systems analysis skills and was engaged in software development. I have been a team leader who works well and communicates effectively with system, software, as well as analog and digital circuit design teams. My strengths lie in deep analytical skills that lead to novel solutions that offer clear advantages over existing designs. I am always striving to find most optimal solutions not only from the circuit design perspective, but also business, process technology, system and architecture. This commitment to innovation, quality and attention to detail has resulted in tens of full-custom mixed-signal complex IC chips, all 1st pass successes. I have been elevated to an IEEE Fellow (Class 2009) for “contributions to the digital RF communications systems”. In 2012, I won a prestigious IEEE Circuits and Systems Industrial Pioneer Award.
In July 2009, I moved from industry to academia by joining the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands as a fully tenured academic, where currently I hold a guest appointment of Full Professor “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hoogleraar”.
In Sept. 2014 I accepted a Full Professor appointment at University College Dublin in Ireland to establish a €6.3M center of circuit design for IoT applications sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). In 2017, I co-started activities aimed at realizing quantum bits (qubits) using quantum well structures in commercial CMOS process technology and their tight integration with control electronics. I am a Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Equal1, a startup company based in Dublin, Ireland and Silicon Valley, California with a mission to build world’s first fully integrated CMOS quantum computer.
EXPERIENCE
• Carrying out research, teaching and supervising MSc and Ph.D. students (currently: 8) and postdocs in the area of microelectronics, concentrating on RF and analog circuit design using advanced CMOS for (mostly) IoT applications, as well as quantum computers.
• Designed and teaching two new classes: EEEN40570 “Analogue Integrated Circuits” and EEEN40600 “Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits”.
• Also regularly acting as a consultant to various IC companies.
• Co-founded a company, Equal1 Limited (http://www.equal1.com), to produce world’s first practical quantum computer.
07/2009 – 11/2016 Professor in Department of Microelectronics, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Delft, The Netherlands
• Carrying out research, teaching and supervising Ph.D. (currently: 4) students in the area of microelectronics, concentrating on RF and high-speed analog circuit design using advanced CMOS.
• Designed and taught a new graduate class T4371 “Digital RF”. Co-founder of two startup companies.
• Also regularly acting as a consultant to various IC companies. Part-time since Sept 2014.
• Co-founded (with Prof. Edoardo Charbon) a company, Fastree3D S.A.
(http://www.fastree3d.com/) based in Switzerland, to produce IC chips for time-of-flight automotive lidars.
11/1999 – 06/2009 Digital RF Processor (DRP) Group, Texas Instruments (TI), Dallas, Texas, USA
• Invented, developed and popularized the Digital RF Processor (DRP) technology: A novel all-digital frequency synthesizer, all-digital RF transmitter, and discrete-time RF receiver architecture that is suitable for the mainstream digital CMOS processes and presents a unique opportunity to build ultra-low-cost and power-efficient single-chip radios. The DRP architecture was designed from the ground up for the nanoscale CMOS with its inherent limitations of low-voltage headroom, analog-unfriendly transistors, large substrate noise from the digital baseband, poor MOS device modeling and process variability. Pioneered the use of scaled CMOS for RF application at the time when SiGe technology was considered unquestionably superior. This research has resulted in 110 issued US patents, as well as 150 journal and conference publications. TI’s BRF6150 Bluetooth IC, the first generation of DRP, and the second generation of DRP for the single-chip GSM cellular phones (“Locosto” and “UPPcosto”) were released into ultra-high volume production.
• Between 2007—2009, I was a CTO of the DRP group engaged in strategic research. Holder of an elected title of Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (limited to 2% of all TI engineers). Elected to IEEE Fellow title (class of 2009) for the invention and the popularization of “digital RF”.
08/1995 – 11/1999 Hard Disk Drive Read Channel Group, Texas Instruments (TI), Dallas, Texas, USA
• Developed a new digitally intensive CMOS read channel architecture for magnetic recording hard-disk drives.
• Developed a top-down VHDL methodology and simulation/modeling environment for the mixed-signal system-on-chip (SoC) IC’s. Designed ultra-high-speed (550 MHz) 8-tap 6-bit FIR filter and LMS coefficient adaptation, phase detector, timing and gain error correction circuits in 0.18 um CMOS.
• Designed sync detect circuit and LMS adaptation in 0.5 um BiCMOS. Resulted in 12 issued US patents and 11 journal and conference publications.
05/1991 – 08/1995 Alcatel Network Systems, Richardson, Texas, USA
• Design work in telecommunications systems, discrete analog, and digital circuits, high-speed signal integrity, software algorithms.
• Gained complete expertise of an entire clock subsystem of a large telecommunications SONET cross-connect system. Granted two US patents.
EDUCATION
2002 Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, USA. Thesis: “Digital deep-submicron CMOS frequency synthesis for RF wireless applications” (won the Best Thesis Award)
1992 M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
1991 B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, with summa cum laude distinction, University of Texas at Dallas, USA