Subramanian Iyer, Distinguished Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been named to the Charles P. Reames Chair in Electrical Engineering.

The Reames Chair was established in 2008 by UCLA Engineering alumnus Charles P. Reames, a former senior director at semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom, to support an outstanding scholar in electrical engineering.

Iyer joined UCLA in 2015 following an accomplished career at IBM, where he was an IBM Fellow and director of the company’s System Scaling Technology Department. His key contributions included the development of the first silicon germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor used in mobile communication; embedded DRAM, a dense, high-performance memory integrated in all IBM Systems products; eFUSE, used for redundancy and repair of chips; 45-nanometer technology, which spawned the first generation of smart phones and tablets; and three-dimensional integration.

“Professor Iyer is widely known for his pioneering work in semiconductors,” said UCLA Engineering Dean Jayathi Murthy. "Since coming to UCLA, he has been a major force in shaping the future of the industry. He is unequivocally deserving of this honor, which is made possible by Charles Reames’ commitment to continued excellence at UCLA Engineering.”

Said Reames, “The challenge for an outstanding research institution such as UCLA is not just to push the envelope, but to exemplify great innovation. I am excited about an individual as creative as Professor Iyer holding this chair, and the resulting advances we will see in electrical engineering.” 

At UCLA, Iyer has established and serves as director of the Center for Heterogeneous Integration and Performance Scaling (CHIPS), a consortium of academic and industry leaders in the semiconductor field. His current technical interests are in advanced packaging and three-dimensional stacking of chips for system-level scaling. He’s also working on a long-term semiconductor and packaging roadmap for computers, as well as hardware and supply-chain integrity.

Iyer has published more than 250 papers and holds more than 70 patents. He is an IEEE Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He is also a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and in 2012 received the IEEE Daniel Noble Medal for emerging technologies.

“I am deeply humbled and honored by this appointment and want to express my sincere gratitude to the Reames family for their generosity,” Iyer said. “I hope I will live up to their expectations as well as those of my colleagues at UCLA.”

Iyer is the second holder of the Reames Chair. The first was Alan Willson, a longtime UCLA electrical engineering professor who retired in 2014.

Reames was senior director of broadband systems engineering at Broadcom. He retired in 2011 after more than two decades with company, including serving as director of modem technology and director of cable and satellite systems.