Donald O. Pederson Solid-State Circuits Award

About the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award

The IEEE annually recognizes outstanding contributors worldwide to the art and science of electro- and information technologies with technical awards in 3 dozen technical specialities. 

 The IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award for Solid-State Circuits for outstanding contributions in the field of solid-state circuits goes to an individual or team of not more than three. The award includes a bronze medal, certificate, and cash honorarium which are presented at the ISSCC.  

The SSCS Awards Committee supports the process by encouraging quality nominations and substantive endorsements from qualified peers. The IEEE Awards Board controls the process. In November 2005 this IEEE technical field award was named after Donald O. Pederson of University of California Berkeley. Up until that time, the award was called the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Award. 

The SSCS Awards Committee welcomes suggestions for nominations for any or all of these awards. Any person may nominate a candidate for an IEEE medal or award; self-nomination, however, is not allowed. The SSCS Awards Committee will help in the nomination process and will undertake finding appropriate nominators if necessary; the Committee can be contacted through the Chair. 

The nomination process consists of the nomination itself, letters from 3 to 5 endorsers, and a letter from the President or designee of the Society in the nominee's field. Instructions for the nominator, guidelines, and award criteria are available here.  

The nomination forms can be filled in online or downloaded in a variety of word-processing formats. Please click here for more information. 

Please send your recommendations to:

John R. Long

It is acceptable to nominate an individual or team for more than one TFA for the same work (if the work falls within the scope of the respective TFAs). However, the nominee(s) cannot receive more than one TFA for the same work. A complete list of IEEE Technical Field Awards is available on the IEEE Web site: See the complete list of awards for links to the forms and the list of past recipients.

Laurence W. Nagel Receives the 2019 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits

 

The recipient of the 2019 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits is Laurence W. Nagel (President, Omega Enterprises Consulting, Kensington, California) for the development and demonstration of SPICE as a tool to design and optimize electronic circuits. 

Perhaps no single development has had as much impact on the microelectronics industry as the SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) program, which originally was developed by Laurence Nagel during his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. SPICE and its subsequent enhancements moved mainstream circuit design from empirical, bread-board-based design into the era of scientifically based simulation and modeling. Nagel incorporated both direct current and alternating current analysis; transient analysis; and, based on adjoint network theory and sparse matrix techniques, efficient sensitivity, noise, and distortion analysis. SPICE was made freely available from the start and was widely adopted by universities, allowing students to learn how circuits work without having to build them and to easily evaluate design alternatives. Today's multibillion-transistor ICs, especially mixed-signal and precision analog ICs, would be impossible without the detailed circuit simulation that SPICE provides. An IEEE Life Fellow, Nagel is president of Omega Enterprises Consulting, Kensington, CA, USA. 

The IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits will be presented at the 2019 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

 Laurence Nagel (left), the winner of the 2019 Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits with Bram Nauta (right). 

Past Recipients of the Donald O. Pederson Solid-State Circuits Award 

Past Recipients Solid-State Circuits Award

Past Recipients of the Solid-State Circuits Development Award: