Electronics Engineers Honor UT Dallas Colleague

UT Dallas Professor Robert Wallace has been named an IEEE Fellow, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

An authority on semiconductor materials and integration, Dr. Wallace is co-inventor of a widely used insulator technology that has played a significant part in enabling today’s semiconductor manufacturers to produce chips that are smaller and more energy-efficient than ever before. The technology, called “high-k dielectrics,” is now employed in the industry’s most advanced microprocessors.

A professor of materials science and engineering and electrical engineering at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UT Dallas, he is the 11th member of the school’s faculty to be named an IEEE fellow. It’s a designation that’s granted each year to a select group of IEEE members for accomplishments that “have contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology,” according to IEEE.

Dr. Wallace was previously a professor of materials science at the University of North Texas. Prior to that, he spent nine years at Texas Instruments, rising to become a senior member of TI’s technical staff and a branch manager for advanced transistor materials research.

Dr. Wallace holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author or co-author of more than 130 scientific articles, including one that was recently recognized by the Semiconductor Research Corp. as among of the most influential research publications in the field. He holds 70 patents and is also a member of the physics faculty at UT Dallas.

IEEE is the professional organization and standards-setting authority for a wide range of high-tech fields within electrical and electronics engineering, including aerospace and automotive systems, computer engineering, telecommunications, control systems, signal processing, biomedical engineering and consumer electronics.