Tomás Palacios named new director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories
The Microsystems Expertise Laboratories (MTL) at MIT has a brand new director. Maria Zuber, vp of analysis and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, and Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science (EECS), lately introduced that Tomás Palacios assumed the function of director of MTL on Dec. 1. Palacios has served as director of the 6-A MEng Thesis Program; business officer; and professor {of electrical} engineering inside the Division of EECS. He succeeds Superior Tv and Sign Processing (ATSP) Professor Hae-Seung (Harry) Lee, who has been the director of MTL since 2019.
“MTL is a really distinctive place,” stated Palacios in his e-mail to the lab’s neighborhood. “The analysis being achieved right here is second to none, and MTL’s dedication to growing modern applied sciences in any respect ranges of the stack, from supplies to gadgets, circuits and programs, is an instance to all. We simply have to browse the web, make a cellphone name, or recharge our electrical car to see how applied sciences that got here out of MTL have discovered their place in functions throughout us.”
Palacios joined MTL in 2006, after receiving his PhD from the College of California at Santa Barbara, and his undergraduate diploma in telecommunication engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). A world skilled in gallium nitride electronics for each radio frequency and energy functions, Palacios and his group have additionally made seminal contributions to two-dimensional supplies and gadgets, and their heterogeneous integration with state-of-the-art silicon electronics. Palacios is the founding director of the MTL Middle for Graphene Units and 2D Techniques, in addition to the co-founder of Finwave Semiconductor, Inc., an MTL spinoff firm commercializing gallium nitride energy amplifiers for 5G communications.
Palacios is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and has served the microelectronics neighborhood in lots of roles, extra lately as the overall chair for the IEEE Symposium on Very Massive-Scale Integration Expertise and Circuits. His work has been acknowledged with a number of awards, together with the Presidential Early Profession Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2012 and 2019 IEEE George Smith Award, and the Nationwide Science Basis, Workplace of Naval Analysis, and the Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company Younger School Awards, amongst many others.
Palacios follows within the footsteps of Superior Tv and Sign Processing (ATSP) Professor Hae-Sung (Harry) Lee, whose steerage of MTL all through the pandemic Palacios praised, saying, “his superb management throughout … arguably probably the most tough instances I’ve ever seen, has been each inspiring, and key to place MTL within the superb place we’re as we speak.”
The lab will proceed to construct upon its lengthy historical past of innovation, Palacios guarantees: “Semiconductors and microsystems have by no means been extra vital. It isn’t solely about their great implications to computing and communication, but additionally that they’re the important thing to fixing the local weather disaster, remodeling well being care, and even the way forward for schooling. Now we have a-once-in-a-generation alternative to set the inspiration for the way forward for semiconductors and microsystems, and every part which means for the way forward for our society. I’m satisfied that the MTL neighborhood will play an important function in setting this basis.”
Palacios is assuming this new function throughout a interval of transition for MTL. In January, MTL will transfer to the Workplace of the Vice President for Analysis, sustaining a dotted line reporting to the Faculty of Engineering. This transfer will assist foster additional collaboration between MTL and the Analysis Laboratory of Electronics and develop the microelectronic and nanotechnology analysis neighborhood at MIT.