Four Stanford Engineering professors named IEEE fellows

Thomas Lee, Sanjay Lall, Boris Murmann and Christos Kozyrakis were recognized for their extraordinary achievements in engineering.

Thomas Lee, Sanjay Lall, Boris Murmann and Christos Kozyrakis, all members of the electrical engineering faculty at Stanford, have been named IEEE fellows in recognition of their extraordinary achievements in engineering.

Lee was recognized for contributions to the design of CMOS radio-frequency integrated circuits, tiny chips used in wireless communication. His contributions to the field include a textbook on the topic.

Lee received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1990. He recently returned from a sabbatical during which he directed the Microsystem Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the research agency specifically tasked with fostering the development of new microelectronic systems. Lee is also a passionate teacher who offers a course targeted at freshmen titled “Things about Stuff,” which tells the stories behind the greatest inventions, including the telephone, the television and the transistor.

Lall, who is also a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford, was recognized for contributions to the control of networked systems, including cellular networks and networks of wireless sensors. One of his papers from 2005 that described a new way to make measurements with a network of wireless sensors has been cited more than 700 times.

He received his PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge in 1995. After graduating, Lall spent time as a NATO research fellow at MIT. He received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2006 and a presidential early career award from the NSF in 2007. He has worked on satellite systems for Lockheed Martin, audio systems for Sennheiser and problems related to Formula 1 racecars. Lall has also published more than 130 original research papers and advised more than 10 PhD students.

Murmann was recognized for contributions to the design of digitally-assisted analog integrated circuits, devices that can interface between digital and analog signals. His work is useful for measuring analog circuits with digital sensors, high-speed communication systems and information processing inspired by networks in the brain.

He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2003 but spent time earlier in his career designing low-power chips for automotive uses at Neutron Microelectronics in Germany. Murmann received an early career award from Agilent Technologies in 2009 and was a Sony faculty scholar at Stanford in 2010. The IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society named him a distinguished lecturer for 2011 to 2012. He is also a member of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

Kozyrakis, who holds a joint appointment in the Stanford computer science department, was recognized for contributions to high-performance, energy-efficient and secure memory systems. His work focuses on devices as small as phones and as large as the data centers that enable cloud computing and storage. He also leads the multi-scale architecture and systems team, a group of researchers trying to make computers of all sizes faster while also making them more efficient, more secure and cheaper.

He received his PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Kozyrakis received a research grant from the Okawa Foundation in 2005 and a CAREER award from the NSF in 2006. He also held the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell endowed professorship at Stanford from 2009 to 2011.

The four new fellows will each receive a framed certificate with his name and a description of the work that earned him the distinction, along with a lapel pin. Each year, the IEEE elevates no more than 0.1 percent of members to the distinguished level of fellow.

Last modified Fri, 5 Dec, 2014 at 13:14