Professor Azad Naeemi has been selected as the first recipient of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) James D. Meindl Innovators Award. The award was established by SSCS last year in honor of former ECE professor Jim Meindl, who passed away in 2020. Meindl, a renowned figure in the world of semiconductors, came to Georgia Tech in 1993, where he joined ECE as the Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor in Microsystems and served as the director of the Microelectronics Research Center (MiRC) until his retirement in 2013. He served as the founding director of the Nanotechnology Research Center, which eventually became what is now known as the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology.

The award is of special significance to Naeemi, who established a close relationship with Meindl during the time they shared together at Georgia Tech.

“Professor Meindl was my Ph.D advisor, my mentor, my friend, and beyond all, my role model,” Naeemi said. “It is a truly humbling experience to receive this award which honors his incredible legacy.”

The James D. Meindl Innovators Award supports Meindl’s legacy of innovation in the field of solid-state circuits by funding projects that build excitement around the field among future generations, encouraging their participation, and awarding applicants whose project proposals are selected. Applicants are judged based on their past contributions to the field of solid-state circuits and the novelty and impact of their proposals.

Professor Naeemi’s proposal aims to provide an experiential learning experience for students around the world by creating an immersive digital world that allows students to experiment with and visualize fundamental concepts in solid-state devices and circuits. For the past few years, he has been collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students towards this goal. The first edition of this educational tool was made public in December 2021. Since then, more than 700 users from more than 50 countries have used the online tool.

Naeemi received both his master’s degree (2001) and Ph.D. (2003) from the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He worked as a research engineer in the Microelectronics Research Center at Georgia Tech from 2004 to 2008 and joined the ECE faculty at Georgia Tech in fall 2008. His research crosses the boundaries of materials, devices, circuits, and systems investigating integrated circuits based on conventional and emerging nanoelectronic and spintronic devices and interconnects.

Naeemi will receive a development grant of $14,000 to support his project proposal, plus a plaque and an honorarium. He was presented with the award at the 2022 International Solid-State Circuits Conference on Feb. 22.