James D. Meindl, director of the Microelectronics Research Center and the Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named recipient of one of technology's most prestigious accolades - the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor. Some of his pioneering contributions to microelectronics transformed medical research, improved portable military devices and resulted in the creation of a portable electronic reading aid for the blind.

Sponsored by the IEEE Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.), the medal will be presented to Meindl at the IEEE Honors Ceremony on Saturday, June 24 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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, New Jersey.

Later at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, 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 the Center for Integrated Systems at Stanford, 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, New York, 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, Rensselaer, The State University of New York Albany and Georgia Tech in a 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.

During his career at Stanford, Rensselaer and Georgia Tech, Meindl has supervised more than 80 doctoral graduates who went on to have profound impacts on the semiconductor industry.

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.

The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. Through its 365,000 members in 150 countries, the society is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications, to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. The organization also sponsors or co-sponsors more than 300 international technical conferences each year.