Prof. Peter Kennedy

Frequency Synthesis

He received the BE (Electronics) degree from UCD in 1984, the MS and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and 1991, respectively, the DEng from the National University of Ireland in 2010, and the DSc (Engineering) honoris causa from the Queen’s University of Belfast in 2020. He joined UCC as Chair of the Department of Microelectronic Engineering in 2000. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 2003 through 2005 and as UCC’s Vice-President for Research from 2005 to 2011. He moved to UCD in 2017. He has over 400 research publications (including four patents) in the fields of oscillator design, hysteresis, neural networks, nonlinear dynamics, chaos communication, mixed-signal test, and frequency synthesis. He has worked as a consultant for SMEs and multinationals in the microelectronics industry and is founding Director of the Microelectronics Industry Design Association (MIDAS Ireland) and the Microelectronic Circuits Centre Ireland (MCCI). He won UCC’s Invention of the Year Award in2011 and led the development of the US-Ireland Research Innovation Awards in 2014/15. He was made a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) in 1998 “for contributions to the theory of neural networks and nonlinear dynamics and for leadership in nonlinear circuits research and education.” He has served as Chair of the IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award Committee, was a member of the IEEE Fellows Committee, and was Vice-Chair of the IEEE Technical Field Awards Council in 2020. He has received many prestigious awards including Best Paper (International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications), the 88th IEE Kelvin Lecture, IEEE Millennium and Golden Jubilee Medals, and the inaugural Royal Irish Academy Parsons Award in Engineering Sciences. In 2004, he was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy and was made a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland by Presidential Invitation. From 2005 to 2007, he was President of the European Circuits Society and Vice-President of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society (with responsibility for Europe, Africa and the Middle East). He was made a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering in 2014. He was elected to membership of Academia Europaea in 2015. During 2012 and 2013, he was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE CAS Society. He served as Secretary for Policy and International Relations of the Royal Irish Academy from 2012 to 2016 and as President from 2017 to 2020.