Ali Hajimiri

Ali Hajimiri
Residence	United States
Nationality	Iranian American
Fields	Electrical Engineering
Institutions	California Institute of Technology
Alma mater	Sharif University of Technology (B.S.) Stanford University (M.S., Ph.D.)
Doctoral advisor	Thomas H. Lee Bruce A. Wooley
Doctoral students	Ichiro Aoki Donhee Ham Hui Wu Hossein S. Hashemi Roberto Aparicio Joo Christopher White Behnam Analui Xiang Guan Abbas Komijani Ehsan Afshari James Buckwalter Arun Natarajan Aydin Babakhani Edward Keehr Yu-Jiu Wang Florian Bohn Kaushik Sengupta Steven Bowers Kaushik Dasgupta Alex Pai Constantine Sideris
Notable awards	National Academy of Inventors (NAI) (2015), Fellow; Microwave Prize (2015); Excellence in Teaching Award: Associated Students of California Institute of Technology (2014); National Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, Finalist (2014); Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, (2011); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Fellow (2010); Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Microwave Society (2007); Teaching and Mentorship Award: Graduate Student Council, California Institute of Technology (2005); Excellence in Teaching Award: Associated Students of California Institute of Technology (2004); Technology Review Magazine TR35 Top Young Innovator (2004); IBM Faculty Partnership Award (2003); NSF Career Award (2002); Bronze Medal, 21st International Physics Olympiad (1990); Gold Medal (absolute winner), National Physics Olympiad (1990);

Ali Hajimiri is an academic, inventor, and entrepreneur in various fields of technology including electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He is currently the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering as well as the head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He has also worked for Bell Laboratories, Philips Semiconductors, and Sun Microsystems. As a part of his Ph.D. thesis, he developed a time-varying phase noise model for electrical oscillators,^[1] also known as the Hajimiri phase noise model.^[2] In 2002, he cofounded Axiom Microdevices Inc. together with his former students Ichiro Aoki and Scott Kee based on their invention of the Distributed Active Transformer (DAT), which made it possible to integrate RF CMOS power amplifiers suitable for cellular phones in CMOS technology. Axiom shipped hundreds of millions of units before it was acquired by Skyworks Solutions in 2009. He and his students also demonstrated the world's first radar-on-a-chip in silicon technology in 2004.^[3]

He and his team are also responsible for the development of an all-silicon THz imager system, where an integrated CMOS microchip was used in conjunction with a second silicon microchip to form an active THz imaging system, capable of seeing through opaque objects. Various applications of this system appear in security, communications, medical diagnostics, and the human-machine interface.^{[4] [5] [6]}

In 2013, he and some of his team members demonstrated a complete self-healing power amplifier, which through an integrated self-healing strategy, could recover from various kinds of degradation and damage including aging, local failure, and intentional laser blasts.^{[7] [8] [9] [10]}

He is a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He was selected to the world's top 35 innovators under 35 (TR35) at age 32.^[11] He is an IEEE Fellow and has been the recipient of numerous other awards.^[12] He was recognized as one of the top 10 authors in the 60-year history of ISSCC in 2013. He holds 80 granted U.S. patents.^[13] He was one of 45 scientists invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in 2016.^[14] As of 2016, over half of his graduated PhD students have gone on to become university faculty members.^[15]

His favorite band is Pink Floyd.

Books

• The Design of Low Noise Oscillators, co-authored with Thomas H. Lee, Springer, 1999, ISBN 0-7923-8455-5

References

1. A General Theory of Phase Noise in Electrical Oscillators. (PDF), IEEE, February 1998
2. The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, First Edition. Cambridge University Press. 1998.
3. "Caltech Engineers Design a Revolutionary Radar Chip" (Press release). Caltech Media Relations. May 4, 2004.
4. "Ali Hajimiri's Chip May Allow Smartphones to See Through Objects".
5. "Give your smartphone Superman vision". Fox News. December 19, 2012.
6. "A New Tool for Secret Agents—And the Rest of Us.".
7. "How Self-Healing Microchips Recover".
8. "Self-healing chip survives laser blast".
9. "Microchip Adapts to Severe Damage.".
10. "Self-healing chips survive repeated LASER BLASTS.".
11. "TR35: Ali Hajimiri, 32, Technology Review.".
12. "Ali Hajimiri's Biography, Caltech".
13. "US Patent Office.".
14. "Scientists at the World Economic Forum 2016".
15. "Ali Hajimiri's Academic Genealogy, Caltech".

External links

• http://chic.caltech.edu/hajimiri/ Caltech