It is with a profound sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Pierre Rossel, Research Director at LAAS-CNRS, on April 5, 2001, at the age of 58. His courage and will during his two-year battle against cancer were exemplary.
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Pierre Rossel was born in 1943 in Banyuls sur mer, France. After an Engineering degree obtained at ENSHEEIT Toulouse in 1965, he obtained a Ph.D. in 1968 and a State Doctorate degree in 1973 from the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France. From 1965 to 1967, he was a lecturer at this University and from then became a full-time researcher at LAAS laboratory, belonging to the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS). He created and managed two research groups and was the Director of the Joint laboratory between LAAS-CNRS and Motorola Semiconductor.
His research activities were on MOS devices and circuits, and, starting in 1976, focused on silicon power devices and Smart Power Integrated Circuits. Among the numerous research projects he has managed, one can cite his work on dynamic instabilities of MOST, on avalanche mechanisms, on longitudinal and transversal mobility models, and on macro modeling of power RF MOST. He has invented new MOS switching structures with very low on-resistance (LUMOS), with floating islands (FLIMOS, FLIDIODE), worked on planar termination techniques (SIPOS), and proposed some innovative integration architectures, based on the self-shielding mechanism, for power integrated circuits.
He conducted about 50 Ph.D. theses and published 93 journal papers and 187 conference papers, among them 27 invited talks. He participated in 18 books and held 4 patents.
He was an active member of several technical societies, among them the IEEE (Electron Devices and Microwave Theory and Techniques), EPS (European Physical Society), SFP (SociŽtŽ Franaise de Physique), SEE (Société des ƒlectriciens et des Electroniciens), EPE (European Power Electronics), SBM (Sociedade Brasileira da Microeletronica). He acted as a chairman or a technical committee member for numerous conferences: ESSDERC (European Solid State Device Research Conference), EPE (European Power Electronics), IEEE BCTM (Bipolar, BiCMOS Circuits and Technology), IEEE PESC (Power Electronics Specialist Conference), IEEE PEDES (Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems for Industrial Applications), MIEL (International Conference on Microelectronics), MIXDES (Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems), SBMICRO/ICMP (International Conference on Microelectronics and Packaging), IPEC (International Power Electronics Conference). Pierre Rossel was a guest editor for the special issue of IEEE TED on "Power and High-Voltage Integrated Circuits" in December 1986.
He received the first Award of the Midi-Pyrénées Innovation Competition three times, and was part of the best research team in 1995, nominated by the CNRS and the Nouvel Économiste newspaper.
His tenacity and imagination have led the path to several long-term research projects, which are still conducted today in different places.
Pierre Rossel is survived by his wife, Françoise, a son and a daughter.