Nanotech Research Center Names First Director

The Georgia Institute of Technology's new Nanotechnology Research Center has named James Meindl as its founding director. Meindl currently heads Georgia Tech’s Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and is a recent winner of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Medal of Honor. He will lead the center’s efforts to discover breakthrough nanotechnologies using a combination of scientific disciplines, the institute announced.

“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 US to focus primarily on this exciting and inspiring fusion,” Meindl said.

Early in his career, Meindl, an electrical engineer, 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, 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 US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, visit: www.nano.gatech.edu