John F. McDonald
— Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
— Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Yale University, 1969
— M.S., Electrical Engineering, Yale University, 1965
— B.S., Electrical Engineering, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963


Career Highlights:
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 Areas:
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.

Selected Publications:
J.J. Senkevich, C.J. Mitchell, A. Vijayaraghavan, E.V. Barnat, J.F. McDonald, and T.-M. Lu, "Unique Structure/Properties of Chemical Vapor Deposited Parylene E," Journal of Vacuum Science Technology A, 20, (4), 1445-1449, (July/August 2002).

S. Steidl and J.F. McDonald, "A 32-Word by 32-Bit Three-Port Bipolar Register File Implemented Using a SiGe HBT BiCMOS Technology," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 37, (2), 228-236, (February 2002).

J.F. McDonald, B.S. Goda, S.R. Carlough, R.P. Kraft, and T.W. Krawczyk, "SiGe HBT BiCMOS Field Programmable Gate Arrays for Fast Reconfigurable Computing," Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Proceedings – Computers and Digital Techniques, 147, (3), 189-194, (June 20, 2000).

S.R. Carlough, R.A. Philhower, C.A. Maier, S.A. Steidl, P.M. Campbell, A. Garg, K.-S. Nah, M.W. Ernest, J.R. Loy, T.W. Krawczyk, P.F. Curran, R.P. Kraft, H.J. Greub, and J.F. McDonald, "A 2-GHz Clocked AlGaAs/GaAs HBT Byte-Slice Datapath Chip," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 35, (6), 885-894, (June 2000).

B.L. Halpern, P. Komarenko, P.D. Fuqua, J.F. McDonald, G.-R. Yang, J. Fortin, B. Wang, J. Diao, H.Q. Lu, M. Tomozowa, I. Matthew, R. Kraft, H. Bakhru, A. Kumar, and T.M. Lu, "Properties of Parylene-N Using Atomic Hydrogen Enhanced Jet Vapor Deposition," International Journal of Dielectrics for ULSI Multilevel Interconnections, 1, (1), 32-45, (February 2000).

A. Kumar, H. Bakhru, B. Wang, J. Fortin, G.R. Yang, J. McDonald, and T.M. Lu, "Study of Fluorine Diffusion in Metallized Polymers using Ion Beam Techniques,'' Materials Chemistry and Physics, 59, 136-138, (June 1999).

M.S. Krishnamoorthy, J. Loy, and J.F. McDonald, "Optimal Differential Routing Based on Finite State Machine Theory,'' Journal of VLSI Design, 9, (2), 105-117, (1999).

J.F. McDonald, A. Garg, Y.L. LeCoz, H.J. Greub, R.B. Iverson, R.F. Philhower, P.M. Campbell, C.A. Maier, S.A. Steidl, M.W. Ernest, R.P. Kraft, S.R. Carlough, J.W. Perry, and T.W. Krawczyk, "Accurate High-Speed Performance Prediction for Full Differential Current-Mode Logic: The Effect of Dielectric Anisotropy,'' IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 18, (2), 212-219, (February 1999).

J.F. McDonald, L. You, G.-R. Yang, C.-I. Lang, J.A. Moore, P. Wu, and T.-M. Lu, "Vapor Deposition of Parylene-F by Pyrolysis of DiBromoTetraFluoro-p-Xylylene," Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, 11, (6), 3047-3051, (Nov./Dec. 1993).

J.F. McDonald, H.J. Greub, T. Yamaguchi, and T. Creedon, "Cell Library for Current Mode Logic Using an Advanced Bipolar Process," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, special issue on VLSI, (D. Bouldin, guest editor), IEEE Transactions on Solid-State Circuits, JSSC 26, (5), 749-762, (May 1991).

Contact Information:
John F. McDonald
6123 Low Center for Industrial Innovation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 Eighth Street
Troy, N.Y. 12180 USA
(518) 276-2919

E-mail: mcdonald@unix.cie.rpi.edu
http://inp.cie.rpi.edu/research/mcdonald/frisc/

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