Ramesh Harjani

Research Interests

• RF/Analog communication circuits
• Sensor interface electronics
• Low power analog circuit design

Education

• Ph.D., EE, 1989, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
• MTech., EE, 1984, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India
• BTech, EEE, 1982, Birla Institure of Technology & Science, Pilani, India
• O-levels, 1976, St. Xaviers, Kathmandu, Nepal

Awards/Recognition

• Fellow IEEE 2005
• First prize winner SRC/IBM SiGe Design Challenge, 2003
• Paper in "The Best of ICCAD – 20 Years of Excellence in Computer Aided Design", 2002. 
• Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2001-2002)
• First prize winner SRC Copper Design Challenge, 2000
• Outstanding paper award, GOMAC 1998
• National Science Foundation, Research Initiation Award, 1991
• Paper selected among most significant papers in 24 years at the IEEE/ACM DAC
• Best Paper Award at the 24th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference, 1987

Professional Activities

• Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer,  Bermai Inc
• Co-founder iSurgical, Inc.
• Corporate Board/Technical Advisory Board, Zeevo, Prominent Communications Inc., Bermai Inc. 
• Visiting MTS, Lucent Technologies, Allentown, PA (1997, 1998)
• Chair: IEEE Circuits and Systems Society,  Analog Signal Processing Technical Committee (1999-2000)
• Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II (1995-1997)
• Guest Editor: International Journal of High-Speed Electronics and Systems, Special issue on  High-Speed Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits, 2004
• Guest Editor: Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Special issue for the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, 2004
• Technical Program Committees (IEEE CICC, RFIC, ISCAS, DATE, DAC, ICCAD,..)

Personal Interests

In the News

• 2008-04-28: Undergraduate researchers, Eric Severson and Dominic Hogan win Sigma Xi, First and Third Prize for excellence in scientific effort and their ability to communicate their work to a wide audience. Eric Severson's research focuses on significant reduction on size and weight of laptop battery chargers and Dominic's research focuses on developing high efficiency voltage converters to extend the power of batteryless systems.
• 2008-03-14: Analog Design Group Members Martin Sturm, Jackson Harvey, Dominic Hogan Win 2nd prize (phase 1) in SRC Design Challenge
  2^nd place winner in the phase 1 of the 2007-2008 SRC/SIA IC Design Challenge. Their research integrates batteryless operation with lowpower blood/food monitoring RFID design, “Ultra-Low Power UWB Food Safety-Monitoring System”. The group is one of 47 design teams from 28 universities that entered this contest sponsored by the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Semiconductor Research Corporation.
• 2007-winter: Kin-Joe Sham (Analog Design Group member) works with Mechanical Engineering Professor Will Durfee on developing new ideas for business startup.
• 2007-09-21: Harjani & Ahmadi win Techcon Best Paper Award
  ECE graduate student Mahmoud Reza Ahmadi won the Best in Session award at the 2007 Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) TECHCON conference in the area of Digital and High Speed Circuit Design for his paper, "A Generalized Partial Response Receiver for High Speed Serial Links." Ahmadi's co-authors on this paper were ECE professors Jaekyun Moon and Ramesh Harjani.
• 2007-09-24: Prof. Harjani speaks at Ultra-wideband panel
  Prof. Harjani speaks on panel on "Technical Challenges on Next & Future Generation UWB Systems" at ICUWB 2007. Other panelists include Prof. Robert A. Scholtz, Dr. Robert Fontana, Dr. Shuzo Kato, Dr. Friedbert Berens, Dr. Michael Yan-Wah Chia and Dr. Walter Hirt.
• 2007-05-21: Prof. Harjani presents at TechTuneup 2007
  Prof. Harjani speaks on "Short-Range Wireless Communications for Biomedical Applications" at 2007 TechTuneup: Bio-Inspired Electronics
• 2006-06-26: Prof. Harjani presents at TechTuneup 2006
  Prof. Harjani presents "Designing deep submicron (<100nm) analog circuits" at 2006 TechTuneup: Nano VLSI
• 2005-12-25: Tech Talk to feature Professor Harjani
  The University of Minnesota's Tech Talk television program will feature Professor Ramesh Harjani talking about wireless communication. You can watch the program in the Twin Cities on TPT Minnesota Channel 17 on Sunday, 2005 December 25 at 9:00 p.m.
• 2005: Professor Harjani elected Fellow of IEEE
  Professor Ramesh Harjani has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for contributions to the design and computer-aided design (CAD) of analog and radio frequency circuits."
• Design of low-phase-noise CMOS ring oscillators, 49 (5): 328-338 Liang Dai and Ramesh Harjani, (PDF), among most downloaded papers from IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems, 2002
• A Low-Power CMOS VGA For 50 MB/S Disk-Drive Read Channels 42 (6): 370-3,  R. Harjani (PDF) among most cited papers in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, 1995