SAN FRANCISCO. A more than 22-year veteran of the faculty at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was recently recognized for contributions to the field of computer engineering.
Carlos Araujo, professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the 2006 Daniel E. Noble Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Dec. 12 at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco. The award recognizes Araujo’s work in the area of ferroelectric random access memory, a critical infrastructure for the development of cell phones and other computer-related technologies.
The award is named in honor of Daniel E. Noble, executive vice chairman of the board for Motorola, and recognizes outstanding contributions to emerging technologies within recent years. Awarded annually since 2001, previous winners have included researchers at two Japanese universities and researchers at Texas Instruments and International Business Machines. Araujo is the first American university professor to receive the award.
“Awards such as this do not come everyday nor do they result from a single activity,” Jeremy Haefner, dean, College of Engineering, said. “They are a result of years of work and inspiration.”
Araujo was lauded for his groundbreaking work that led to the development of integrated circuit-embedded FeRAMs used in “smart “cards, electronic money and other products. Araujo and his colleagues at two companies he founded, Ramtron and Symetrix, identified a ferroelectric material that resolved fatigue problems and production difficulties in memory chips that also ensures that stored information is retained, even when the power is off. This technology was instrumental in reducing the size of cell phones and has also been used to develop “smart” cards with applications ranging from toll road passes and corporate security cards to banking.
Araujo joined the UCCS faculty in 1983 as an assistant professor. He was named associate professor in 1988 and professor in 1991. He has served as assistant dean of research and was named a CU outstanding faculty member. He also is editor of the “Journal of Integrated Ferroelectrics” and has edited two books on ferroelectrics, holds 176 patents and is author or co-author of more than 286 scholarly papers on ferroelectrics.
He holds bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind.
The IEEE is a non-profit, technical professional association of more than 360,000 individual members in approximately 175 countries. Through its members, the IEEE is a leading authority in technical areas ranging from computer engineering, biomedical technology and telecommunications, to electric power, aerospace and consumer electronics, among others.
UCCS, located on Austin Bluffs Parkway in northeast Colorado Springs, is the fastest growing university in Colorado and one of the fastest growing universities in the nation. The university offers 26 bachelor’s degrees, 17 master’s and four doctoral degrees. The campus enrolls about 7,600 students annually. For more information, visit http://www.uccs.edu.