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Associate Dean Named Fellow of Largest Engineering Association

Dr. Poras Balsara

Dr. Poras Balsara

Dr. Poras T. Balsara, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of electrical engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to the design of all-digital frequency synthesizers.

IEEE is the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology, with 400,000 members in 160 countries. The rank of fellow is conferred by the IEEE board of directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any IEEE field, and is the highest grade of membership. Balsara is among the less than 0.1 percent of the membership selected this year to receive the honor.

“I could not have received this honor without my students, to whom I am always very thankful for their dedication, support and hard work,” Balsara said.

Balsara’s research interests have included very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design, design of energy efficient circuits and systems, power electronics, circuits for signal processing and communications, and nanoscale “CMOS” circuits. In the early 2000s, Balsara and his students were pioneers in using digital circuit design techniques for synthesizers suitable for what is known as RF CMOS (radio frequency complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) wireless applications. These techniques enabled a new generation of wireless transceiver architectures amenable to digital implementation in nanoscale digital CMOS processes. These all-digital synthesizers are cheaper to fabricate than the prior analog intensive implementations and spurred innovation in a new research area in the field.

I could not have received this honor without my students, to whom I am always very thankful for their dedication, support and hard work.

Dr. Poras Balsara,
associate dean for academic affairs and professor of electrical engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science

Balsara co-authored All-Digital Frequency Synthesizer in Deep-Submicron CMOS in 2006; the book was later published in Japanese.

Balsara’s research and teaching focus now is on power electronics and power management circuits, along with the design of energy efficient circuits and systems. After previously serving as the Jonsson School's interim department head of electrical engineering and interim associate dean of academic affairs, Balsara was named an associate dean in the Jonsson School in fall 2013. Balsara also serves as a technical advisor on the scientific advisory board of Cirasys Inc., a spinoff company located in UT Dallas’ Venture Development Center.

Balsara earned a diploma in electrical engineering from what was formerly known as the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute, a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bombay, and master's and doctoral degrees from Penn State University. He joined UT Dallas in 1989 and has been a visiting researcher at Texas Instruments.

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