School of Engineering

John F. McDonald
Professor

Department Affiliation:

Department of Electrical, Computer, & Systems Engineering

Education:

Ph.D., Yale University
Electrical Engineering

M.S., Yale University
Electrical Engineering

B.S., The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Electrical Engineering

Background:

McDonald joined Rensselaer's Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department in 1974 after spending five years teaching in Yale University's Engineering and Applied Science Department. He also briefly served as a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories. McDonald was a founding member of the Rensselaer Center for Integrated Electronics (CIE) in 1980, where he continues to serve as a professor and researcher.

A senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), McDonald has published 240 articles, including about 80 journal articles. He holds ten patents and has a number of additional disclosures. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who of America, Who's Who of the World, and a dozen other compendia of professional recognition.

Research Interests:

McDonald's broad research interests include communications theory, coding theory, encryption, digital signal processing, computer hardware design, applications of image processing to electron beam lithography proximity correction, focused ion beam micromachining, multi-chip HF packaging, high interconnection modeling, low-k dielectrics, high-k dielectrics, and field programmable gate arrays. He is also involved with very large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuit design with special emphasis on heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT), as well as with metal-semiconductor-field-effect-transistor (MESFET) and modulation-doped field effect transistor (MODFET) technology.

His most recent research focuses on SiGe HBT bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) design and its applications to wireless circuits; ultra wide band, high-speed processor design; landed Internet circuits; broadband data transfer; operations at liquid nitrogen temperature; asynchronous circuits; and single-event upset (SEU) tolerant SiGe circuit design. In addition, he is conducting research on 3-D laminated circuit stacking using the wafer bonding technique.