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UCLA’s Behzad Razavi Awarded 2012 Donald O. Pederson PrizeColleagues and Former Students Recall Intellectual Impatience, Phenomenal Productivity, and Nurturance in the Classroom

Behzad Razavi arrived at Stanford from Sharif University in Tehran in the fall of 1987 to become the eighth graduate student of Bruce Wooley, who had joined the faculty only a few years before. “He was clearly exceptional from when I fi rst met him,” Wooley recalled in a telephone interview. “He was intel-lectually impatient, his productivity was phenomenal, and he was one of those students who charge ahead on their own.”

“The typical time from the bach-elor’s to a Ph.D. is typically about fi ve or six years,” Wooley continued. “But Behzad was too impatient for that. After working with me for only a short while, he took the initiative to go out in the Valley to arrange for the fabrication of circuit designs he was working on. Within his fi rst year of graduate study, he was making his own contacts with people who were interested in his work. He fi nished an exceptionally productive doctoral program in just a little over four years,” which is quite remarkable.

The Fine Art of JugglingResponding via e-mail to Dr. Wool-ey’s remarks, Prof. Razavi, demur-ring, said, “Bruce is too kind. But I have always liked to work on mul-tiple fronts, giving each task its fair share of time and then letting my subconscious work on it. For exam-ple, I am usually writing a book in parallel with everything else that I need to do. Of course, this modus

operandi is common in academia; we call it the ‘fi ne art of juggling.’ When asked how I fi nd time to write books, I jokingly answer that I have a twin brother who does the writing and I just take the credit!”

According to Dr. Wooley, jug-gling was Prof. Razavi’s style from the outset: at Stanford he not only

progressed rapidly but “did an extraordinary amount of work—com-pleting three diff erent complex A-to-D converter designs that embodied a lot of new ideas” that he eventually implemented in Bi-CMOS technolo-gies. At a time when “it wasn’t clear whether Bi-CMOS would eventually become a mainstream technology, Behzad was exceptionally eff ective at exploring the potential of combining bipolar and CMOS devices to realize a variety of analog circuit functions, even as a student,” Wooley said.

After leaving Stanford with his Ph.D., Dr. Razavi spent several years at Bell Labs (as did another Wooley student, past SSCS President, Bern-hard Boser), where he worked in the same research group that Wooley

had been in at the start of his career, “expanding his research from data converters into broadband commu-nications, both optical and RF, in which he did pioneering work,” said Wooley. “His intensity and the level of eff ort he was able to maintain were really extraordinary. He didn’t get derailed or sidetracked while managing multiple eff orts.”

Dr. Razavi acknowledged with disarming modesty that his stint at Bell Labs laid the cornerstone of his career: “With Bell Labs being driven by communication sciences, it was only natural for me to enter the com-munication circuits fi eld and explore ideas for broadband and wireless transceivers. The four years I spent at Bell Labs were enormously pro-ductive, not just because I worked six or seven days a week but, more importantly, because the company’s vast intellect never ceased to fan and nurture my curiosity.”

When asked which of his accom-plishments he is most proud of, Prof. Razavi replied, “The steady eff ort to push CMOS to higher fre-quencies has been my research pas-sion. We have now demonstrated 300-GHz fundamental oscillations in 65-nm CMOS, placing ourselves at a striking distance of terahertz communication.”

Meant-to-Be Meandering into TeachingWhile at Bell Labs, Prof. Wooley recalled, Dr. Razavi “took the ini-tiative to again go off on his own to build a relationship with Princ-eton University, giving lectures and

Digital Ob ject Id entifier 10.1109/MSSC .2011.2177329

Date of publication: 14 February 2012

A 300-Ghz fundamental CMOS oscillator demonstrated by Prof. Razavi and his students.

22 WINTER 20 12 IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

courses there.” He also took a leave in 1995 to teach a data converter course of his own making at Stan-ford as a guest lecturer: “He did a phenomenal job. His teacher ratings were at the 98th percentile in the entire school of engineering,” said Wooley.

Moreover, the notes Dr. Razavi prepared for the course “ended up as a small text, 200 pages or so that became his fi rst book—a very clear, very well organized introduction to data converter design, fi lled with a lot of ideas that had emerged within the preceding fi ve years, that pro-vided an excellent summary of vari-ous approaches to data converter design and many of the circuit tech-niques that were coming into use in mainstream CMOS.” According to Wooley, the book proved to be an outstanding introduction to the fi eld for both students and professionals who were just getting into the fi eld.

In Dr. Razavi’s view, that mono-gram started his book writing career. “The love of teaching can manifest itself in the classroom or through the written word, and that’s why I wrote my fi rst book, Principles of

Data Conversion System Design, on data converters in the early 1990s. There have been a number of other books since, serving students and engineers around the globe,” he said

Model Professor Prof. Razavi’s students at UCLA remember him as a model of hard work, versatility, discipline, and patience: “Working 40 hours a week is for retired people,” he is known to have said every year in his greet-ing to entering Ph.D. students. Nev-ertheless, none complained, said Mediatek’s ChuanKang Liang in an e-mail “because he himself often worked more than 50 hours a week, and we saw him in the offi ce on the weekends. Few people probably know he spends ten hours preparing the material for a 50-minute under-graduate class, and he keeps asking himself possible questions students may have to improve the guiding steps.”

Another former student, Jafar Savoj, now director of Engineering at Xilinx, Inc. said, “Behzad is per-haps the most disciplined person that I have ever encountered. I have

BEHZAD RAZAVIFor pioneering contributions to the design of high-speed CMOS com-munication circuits

Behzad Razavi’s pioneering work on high-speed complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits for communications technologies has helped change the field of circuit design and continues to push the envelope of high-performance analog integrated circuits. Dr. Razavi pioneered the con-cept that innovations at the architecture level can greatly relax the design at the circuit level for wireless transceivers. He was an early proponent of direct conversion for wireless transceiv-ers, which has become widely used in many wireless systems including cellular phone handsets. With his students at the University of Califor-nia, Los Angeles (UCLA), Dr. Razavi has explored new architectures for

radio-frequency (RF) applications from 900 MHz to 60 GHz, in-troducing “synthesiz-er-friendly” transceiv-ers. Dr. Razavi is also known for applying RF concepts to wireline/fiber-optic transceiv-ers, in particular, clock and data recovery (CDR) circuits and broadband amplifiers. He and his students were the first to demonstrate 10-Gb/s and 40-Gb/s CDR circuits in CMOS technology. He was named one of the top ten authors in the 50-year history of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Razavi is currently a professor in the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA.

2012 IEEE DONALD O. PEDERSON AWARD IN SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS

Sponsored by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society

Books and translations of books by Prof. Razavi, including his first, Principles of Data Conversion System Design.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE WINTER 20 12 23

repeatedly witnessed people walk-ing up to him and asking how he manages to write so many books. He always answers in the same way: ‘I write only one page every day’.”

According to a Razavi post-doc, Bibhu Sahoo, now a faculty member of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, has the knack of bring-ing out “the inherent knowledge in his

students. When I started my research with him, I still remember numerous discussions on potential avenues for research and how they were turned down,” he said. “Though frustrating in

A draft page from Dr. Razavi’s book RF Microelectronics, which has been cited as many as 2,300 times. “Writing is not that straightforward and takes many revisions” says Dr. Razavi.

dd ff ff i bb kk i ll i hh hi h hh bb i dd 2 300 i i i i hh

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the beginning, it helped me come up with better solutions. This highlights two important qualities that every mentor should have: patience to lis-ten to a student’s ideas and respect for them.” For Mediatek’s ChuanKang Liang, Dr. Razavi “was the greatest mentor I could have ever imagined: He always had faith in me. He encouraged me when I was stuck and pushed me to the top. His passion, persistence, diligence, and humbleness became a role model for my professional life.”

Such accolades would surely not surprise Prof. Razavi’s own fi rst men-tor, Prof. Wooley: “As a TA you could tell Behzad would be an exceptional teacher, but who could predict as exceptional as he has proven to be? He’s terrifi c at communica ting with others, enthusiastic, and unbeliev-ably gifted. He’s a born teacher who has been very successful at every-thing he has undertaken.”

—Katherine Olstein

Former student Tai-Cheng Lee (TCL), who is today a professor of Engineer-ing at National Taiwan University, cited three experiences that stand out in his mind about studying with Prof. Razavi. We asked Prof. Razavi (BR) to comment and expand upon Prof. Lee’s thoughts.

“Ensure Contemplation in Peace”TCL: When I was a first-year Ph.D. student at UCLA, I worried badly about my funding. But I remember Dr. Razavi saying, “You shouldn’t worry about money issues; just focus on your research. I will take care of the funding.” Prof. Razavi took care of everything for his students.BR: I believe one cannot innovate under time or financial pressure. So part of my job is to shield my students from short-term demands and hectic schedules so that they can contemplate in peace.

“Get Personally Involved”TCL: When I was working on my last project at UCLA, which was a PLL with a resistorless filter, I came up with a circuit but I had difficulty in analyzing it. In a meeting that I remember to this day, Prof. Razavi said “This circuit is just like a switched-cap filter, right?” His insight, which was always sharp, helped me in my research a lot.

BR: I have been quite hands-on with my students’ research. My rule of thumb is that I should be able to present their Ph.D. work with (almost) as much understanding and depth as they can. In addition, I tackle some research problems of theirs on my own so as to appreciate the issues they are confront-ing more realistically.

“Tell Students to Go For Research, Not the Gold” TCL: When I finished my Ph.D. and decided to aim for an academic career, Prof. Razavi’s advice was to “focus on research in the very beginning and pro-duce papers with great impact. As a professor, don’t even think about making big money.” I am lucky to have been promoted to full professor within eight years thanks to this advice. BR: It is tempting for starting professors to get involved in consulting and, inevitably, neglect their research. I remember once a young faculty mem-ber asking me “What is the biggest mistake I can make?” and I answered, “Too much consulting.” Regardless of the rank at which one starts at a uni-versity, it takes years to establish a strong research program, and consulting distractions prolong this process.

—Compiled by Katherine Olstein

A VIRTUAL CONVERSATION ABOUT TEACHING

Behzad celebrating his birthday with UCLA graduate students in 1999. Standing (from left): Peyman Meshkat, Tai-Cheng Lee, Jafar Savoj, Ying Ying, Lawrence Der, Seema Butala Anand, Shaun Anand, Andrew Chan, Farbod Behbahani, Behzad Razavi, Alireza Razzaghi, Ali Kiaei, Hooman Darabi, and Shahrzad Tadjpour. Sitting (from left): Shervin Moloudi, Ali Karimi, Ali-reza Zolfaghari, and Emad Hegazi.