Georgia Tech's newly formed Nanotechnology Research Center, which recently received a $15 million commitment from the Marcus Foundation for a new building, has named Dr. James Meindl as its founding director.

Meindl, director of Tech's Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and the recent winner of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Medal of Honor, will lead the center's efforts to fuse multiple scientific disciplines in pursuit of breakthrough nanotechnologies.

"The most important economic event of the past half century has been the information revolution. Its principal driver has been the ubiquitous silicon microchip, which marvelously engages nanotechnology. Future breakthroughs comparable to the microchip in their impact may be possible through a fusion of discoveries in physical and biological science and engineering enabled by nanotechnology. The Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Research Center will be the first research center in the U.S. to focus primarily on this exciting and inspiring fusion," Meindl said.

During his career as a scientist, educator and high-level technology executive, Meindl logged a string of exceptional technical accomplishments. Early in his career, he developed micropower integrated circuits for portable military equipment at the Army Signal Corps R&D Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

Later at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., he created low-power integrated circuits and sensors for a portable electronic reading aid for the blind, miniature wireless radio telemetry systems for biomedical research, and non-invasive ultrasonic imaging and blood-flow measurement systems. He was the founding director of the Integrated Circuits Laboratory and a founding co-director of Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems, a model for university and industry cooperative research in microelectronics.

From 1986 to 1993, Meindl was senior vice president for academic affairs and provost of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he oversaw all teaching and research.

He joined Georgia Tech in 1993 and was appointed director of its Microelectronic Research Center in 1996. In 1998, he became the founding director of the Interconnect Focus Center, leading a team of more than 60 faculty members from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, Rensselaer, The State University of New York, Albany and Georgia Tech in partnership with industry and government. His research at Georgia Tech includes exploring solutions to problems that arise from trying to interconnect billions of transistors within a tiny chip.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Meindl is the recipient of the Benjamin Garver Lamme Medal of the American Association for Engineering Education, the J.J. Ebers Award of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, the IEEE Education Medal and the IEEE Solid State Circuits Award. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, all in electrical engineering, from the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.