Professor Rao Tummala held the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in Electronics Packaging in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a joint faculty appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech from 1993-2019. He was also the Founding Director of an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) called the Microsystems Packaging Research Center (PRC) pioneering the Second Law of Electronics (the first being Moore’s Law) by his System-On-Package (SOP) vision. The PRC is currently the largest and most comprehensive microsystems packaging research, education and industry collaboration Center involving 200 students and 15 faculty from ECE, ME, ChE and MSE departments, and 40 global companies from the U.S., Europe and Asia. He was also a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar from 1993-2019.

Research interests:

Microsystems systems packaging, Electronic materials, Display technologies,
Magnetic storage.

Awards & Honors:

• IEEE EAB Major Educational Innovation Award (2003)
• Third Millennium Award from IEEE (2000)
• John Jeppson Award from the American Ceramic Society (1997)
• IEEE Fellow (1993)
• Member National Academy of Engineering, USA (1993)
• Engineering Materials Achievement Award from ASM-International (1992)
• David Sarnoff Award for Industry’s first MCM from IEEE (1991)
• IBM Fellow (1984-1993)
• Total Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing (TEEM) Award from Society of Manufacturing Engineers (1997)
• Educator of the Year for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Innovation in the Field of Electronics from the India-America Cultural Association (2002)