Yannis P. Tsividis received the IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award in a ceremony during the Plenary Session of ISSCC 2007 in San Francisco on 12 February 2007. In the same ceremony, Hugo De Man, Professor Emeritus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits.

IEEE President-Elect Lewis Terman presented the Kirchhoff award to Dr. Tsividis, the Charles Batchelor Memorial Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, on behalf of the IEEE Board of Directors for his contributions to circuits and MOS device modeling.

Terman said one nominator wrote, “Yannis invented, along with his students, the MOSFET-C filtering approach in the 1980s. … This work had significant commercial impact as well as spurring on new fields of research.”

According to a Tsividis colleague, said Terman, “Dr. Tsividis’ textbook, ‘Operation and Modeling of the MOS Transistor,’ along with his constant preaching to the CAD community about the inadequacy of MOSFET models for analog design, was instrumental in the creation of the models such as the EKV and other compact models.  It is ironic that the best reference on MOS transistor modeling was written by a circuits guy.”

De Man was acknowledged for leadership in solid-state circuit design and integrated circuit design methodology.

Terman reported that one nominator said, “In his leadership work with the Esprit program, and then with the EDAC/DATE conferences, just to name two, Professor De Man has continued to push for a strong European presence in design and in design technology for over three decades.”

Terman said an endorser remarked, “Another aspect of Professor De Man’s contribution to Solid State science concerns education.  He played a leading role in the development of a solid curriculum at Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven that takes advantage of his thorough background.  Many generations of students owe their I.C. system design and CAD education profiles to Professor De Man.”

In his acceptance remarks, De Man said, “This award has a very deep and special meaning to me, as Don Pederson together with Roger Van Overstraeten, were my great mentors.  They have shaped my professional and personal life. Without them I would not be standing here. From them I learned that scientific and technological research only flourishes when you surround yourself with creative people, better than yourself, and motivate them to work as a team to make the most ambitious dreams come true. This award therefore is also an award to the many fine people that I had the privilege to work with.”

“Looking back at this, I feel that there is no greater reward for a professor than to see how your students have become the technical leaders of tomorrow. So I am deeply grateful to my 60 and more Ph.D. students and hundreds of master students who really did the work and now are paving the way to the future on all continents. I can now retire without regret.”

The IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award is sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and recognizes outstanding contributions to the fundamentals of any aspect of electronic circuits and systems that has a long-term significance or impact. The IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuitsis sponsored by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and recognizes outstanding contributions to solid-state circuits.

“IEEE and its predecessor societies, the AIEE and the IRE, have been recognizing outstanding contributions for over a century,” said Terman.  “With these awards, the IEEE recognizes that these talented and brilliant individuals also have helped to further the mission of the IEEE to promote the creation of new technologies for the benefit of humanity and the profession.”