Prof. Shepard is a Blavatnik Award Finalist

July 28, 2008

Professor Kenneth Shepard of the Department of Electrical Engineering has been selected as one of nine faculty finalists for the 2008 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists given by the New York Academy of Sciences. Professor Shepard joined the Columbia SEAS faculty in 1997. He was named a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008.

The Blavatnik Awards were created by the New York Academy of Sciences last year to honor the most noteworthy young scientists and engineers from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The 2008 finalists will be honored and five winners will be announced at the New York Academy of Sciences’s annual Science & the City Gala on November 17, 2008.

Professor Shepard’s current research interests include exploiting custom CMOS microelectronics for non-traditional applications in chemistry and biology and combining CMOS electronics with non-traditional materials for novel applications. He and his students are also working on on-chip test and measurement and , circuits for low-power intrachip communications. Prof. Shepard participates in the Focus Center Research Program’s Center for Circuits and Systems Solutions.  Past entrepreneurial experience includes co-foundation of CadMOS Design Technology in 1997, a start-up that pioneered PacifIC and CeltIC, the first tools for large-scale signal integrity analysis of digital integrated circuits. The success of these tools led Cadence to acquire CadMOS in 2001.

He was recognized in 2005 with a Distinguished Faculty Award by the New York Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research. A 1998 winner of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, he also received the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award from the Columbia Engineering School Alumni Association in 1999.  He received the 2005 IBM Pat Goldberg Best Paper Award as well as the best paper award at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Design.

Professor Shepard received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his M. S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering with a minor in physics from Stanford University, where he was a Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellow.