Anantha P. Chandrakasan is dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Chandrakasan co-chairs the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT- Takeda Program, and the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology.
From July 2011 – June 2017, Chandrakasan was head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). During his six-year tenure as head of MIT’s largest academic department, Chandrakasan spearheaded a number of initiatives that opened opportunities for students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. These programs include: “SuperUROP,” a year-long independent research program that provides tools for students to do publication-quality research; the Rising Stars program, an annual event that convenes graduate and postdoc women for the purpose of sharing advice about the early stages of an academic career; and StartMIT, an independent activities period (IAP) class, provides students and postdocs the opportunity to learn from and interact with industrial innovation leaders.
Chandrakasan received the B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989, 1990, and 1994, respectively. Since September 1994, he has been with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where he is currently the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Chandrakasan is a recipient of awards including the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, the UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017, and the 2019 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Service Award. He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip.
A fellow of the IEEE, in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, in 2019 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2020 he was elected as fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Chandrakasan leads the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group, whose research projects have addressed security hardware, energy harvesting, and wireless charging for the internet of things; energy-efficient circuits and systems for multimedia processing; and platforms for ultra-low-power biomedical electronics.
He is a co-author of Low Power Digital CMOS Design (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), Digital Integrated Circuits (Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2003, 2nd edition), and Sub-threshold Design for Ultra-Low Power Systems (Springer 2006).
He has served in various roles for the IEEE ISSCC including Program Chair, Signal Processing Sub-committee Chair, and Technology Directions Sub-committee Chair. He was the Conference Chair of ISSCC from 2010 through 2018. He serves as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Conference starting ISSCC 2019. He was the Director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. From July 2011 through June 2017, he served as the the Head of the MIT EECS Department.
From 2016-2021, he served on the Board of The Engine, an accelerator launched by MIT to support startup companies working on scientific and technological innovation with the potential for transformative societal impact. He currently serves on the Board of Analog Devices Inc., the SMART Governing Board, and the Board of Trustees of the Perkins School for the Blind.