Jacob White appointed to Cecil Green Chair

July 5, 2005

"I am delighted to announce the appointment of Jacob White as chair holder of the Cecil H. Green Professorship in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, for a two year term from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2007."

Jacob is internationally known for his work in numerical methods for engineering applications. His work has spanned a wide range of applications in integrated circuits and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); key contributions have included methods for circuit simulation, the development of FASTCAP and other tools for interconnect analysis, as well as methods for coupled electrostatic and fluidic analysis in MEMS. His research interests have recently expanded to included numerical algorithms for problems in biomolecule design and systems biology.

Jacob received his S.B. degree in electrical engineering from MIT, and his S.M. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked at the IBM T. J. Watson research center from 1985 to 1987, was the Analog Devices Career Development Assistant Professor at MIT from 1987 to 1989, and was a 1988 Presidential Young Investigator. He served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design from 1992 until 1996, and was chair of the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design in 1999. He is currently an Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Jacob has also played an important role in helping establish the new Computation for Design and Optimization (CDO) program at MIT.

The Green Chair is a fitting memorial to Cecil Green, who passed away two years ago (April 11, 2003) at age 102. Sir Cecil Green earned the S.B. and S.M. in Electrical Engineering at MIT. He not only founded Texas Instruments; together with his wife Ida, he became an extraordinary philanthropist. It is a pleasure to help honor his memory by naming Professor White to the Green Chair.

Since its beginning in 1970, the Green Chair has been used by department faculty to explore what is for them new research areas. Previous chairholders have included Peter Elias, Sam Mason, Dick Adler, Al Oppenheim, Fernando Corbató, Tom Lee, Al Drake, Albert Meyer, Rick Morgenthaler, Dave Staelin, Silvio Micali, Nancy Lynch, Tomas Lozano-Perez, Bruce Tidor, and Madhu Sudan. We are delighted to add Jacob to this esteemed group of Green Chair holders."

Duane Boning

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Associate Department Head for Electrical Engineering, EECS