M.C. Frank Chang, a distinguished professor and the Wintek Chair in Electrical Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been awarded the 2023 James Clerk Maxwell Medal by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (IEEE/RSE).

The international award recognizes Professor Chang’s “contributions to heterojunction device technology and CMOS [complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor] System-on-Chip realizations with unprecedented reconfigurability and bandwidth.”

Since joining UCLA in 1997, Professor Chang has led the High Speed Electronics Lab with research focused on high-speed semiconductor devices and integrated circuits for digital, analog, microwave, millimeter-wave and terahertz system-on-chip applications. He has pioneered new methodologies to design reliable heterojunction devices, including digital-controlled artificial dielectric transmissions for reconfigurable software-defined, multi-band/mode radios and radars for extended operation bands and resolutions. Professor Chang’s work has also had a major impact on mobile phones, with the majority of smartphones using the heterojunction bipolar transistor technology he developed to meet the required power and efficiency specifications.