2017 Young Alumni Achievement Award

For technical leadership in the development of optical communication products and breakthrough contributions to the fast tuning digital receiver systemon-chip architecture

Richard T. Chan

Richard T. Chan

BSEE '01, MSEE '02, PhD '05

Qorvo, Inc.

Richardson, Texas

In less than a year, Richard Chan has led a team of design engineers at Qorvo to develop best-in-class optical communication system products such as modulator drivers and Transimpedance amplifiers (TIA) using GaAs, InP, and SiGe.

Prior to joining Qorvo, Chan led the development of state-of-the-art mixed-signal system-on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits and transceiver system applications at BAE Systems. His contributions in wideband high dynamic range SoC and ultrafast tuning Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) in SiGe and InP technologies led to various DoD contract wins from DARPA, ONR, and the U.S. Air Force. He was awarded BAE Systems’ Pioneer Award, Technical Achievement Award, and Chairman’s Bronze Award.

As a graduate research assistant at ECE ILLINOIS, Chan demonstrated the first GaAs transistor laser (TL) along with alumnus Gabriel Walters and Professors Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak, Jr. For his post-doctoral research work, Chan demonstrated the first room-temperature laser operation from a transistor laser and various optical and electrical modulations/frequency mixing applications at microwave (multi-GHz) frequencies.

Chan has served as a TPC member for device technologies in IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium and was a member of the ECE ILLINOIS Alumni Board.