2003 Technical Excellence Award

The following is the text of the presentation speech delivered by SRC Board of Director's Chairman, Richard D. Schinella, at the awards ceremony held during TECHCON 2003.

The SRC Technical Excellence Award is given annually to researchers who, over a period of years, have demonstrated creative, consistent contributions to the field of semiconductor research, who are ground breakers and leaders in their fields, and who are regarded as model collaborators with their colleagues in the SRC member community.

This year SRC is honoring Professor Sachin Sapatnekar of the University of Minnesota for his work in the area of Analysis and Optimization of Signal and Supply Networks. Support for his nomination came from 3 different member companies, each indicating research done by Dr. Sapatnekar to be not only technically outstanding but also relevant to real world issues facing the SRC community.

Charles Alpert of IBM nominated Dr. Sapatnekar for "his work on 2 problems that started as separate research projects but eventually were brought to a point where they were able to feed each other." The first project is related to the development of routing techniques for signal nets and the second project is related to the analysis and optimization of power and ground networks.

According to nominator Noel Menezes of Intel, "Sachin's forte is his ability to study design problems, create elegant problem formulations which he then solves using novel mathematical techniques or insights."

Rajendran Panda of Motorola notes his willingness to maintain a sense of relevancy in whatever research he undertakes. Solutions developed by Dr. Sapatnekar were immediately integrated into work being done at Motorola.

Sani Nassif of IBM writes that what is "most impressive about Dr. Sapatnekar's work is his willingness to take risks in looking at very hard problems and putting the appropriate amount of energy on a problem and understanding when it is appropriate to stop an avenue of exploration. True excellence is in doing a number of things very well."

It is with great pleasure that on behalf of the SRC Board of Directors, I award the 2003 Technical Excellence Award to Professor Sachin Sapatnekar.