IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q2 2022 - 4

My greatest achievement as department chair at UCLA
and at Oregon State University was the hiring
of outstanding new faculty members.
Answer 2: Yes. In 1956, Hungarians revolted against
the occupying Soviet troops and their own Stalinist
government. My wife and I participated in the mass demonstrations
which quickly succeeded in overthrowing and
replacing the government. After a week's hesitation, the
Soviets decided to crush the new government. They killed
many protesters, and destroyed a large part of my home
town, Budapest. In the ensuing chaos, some 200,000 Hungarians
managed to escape to the West, with my wife and I
among them. As in the on-going tragedy in the Ukraine, the
Western countries were deeply sympathetic, but unwilling
to oppose the Soviets militarily. However, they opened
their doors to the refugees. My wife and I received Canadian
visas and moved to that wonderful country. I soon got
a job in Canada as a design engineer at a small company,
and for a few years had fun designing test equipment for
pulp and paper production, beer brewing, and many other
applications. Initially all my circuits used vacuum tubes,
but soon I became familiar with transistors.
After three years of this interesting but heuristic
work, I learned that a large telecom company called
Northern Electric Co. was looking for a filter design specialist.
Since this was my favorite undergraduate subject,
I applied, and spent the next 6 years happily designing
filters and related linear networks with 3 talented junior
colleagues. This launched my career in the CAS area.
I am still deeply grateful for the help which the Canadian
government provided to my wife and me when
we arrived without any money there. I hope that the
Western governments (including the USA and Canada)
will show the same generosity to the huge number of
Ukrainian refugees seeking asylum now.
Question 3: You have done a lot of groundbreaking work
throughout your career. As an example, your work on
delta-sigma data converters has been widely adopted
by industry in many important consumer and communication
applications. More importantly, you introduced
several new research directions. Can you share how you
selected your research directions, especially in your
early career, and how you generated research results
with impact beyond the academic community?
Answer 3: My research directions were usually decided
based on inputs from industry about their current
needs. My early research work on analog filters was motivated
by my job at Northern Electric Company, which
hired me to design high-efficiency filters for their com4
IEEE
CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
munication system products. I got interested in delta-sigma
converters through a consulting activity for a large
German company, which needed high-accuracy data
converters for its systems. Also, good research topics
were often suggested by my excellent students. Finally,
reading the journals and attending the conferences organized
by IEEE CAS and SSCS kept me alert of the industrial
needs and future directions of the state-of-art.
Question 4: You have served as department head at
both UCLA and Oregon State University. How did you
prepare yourself to lead a department? And how did you
experience the transition from professor to chair? Could
you share any issues or obstacles you faced?
Answer 4: I was never a very enthusiastic administrator.
Even as a department chair. I insisted on continuing with
my teaching and research activities, and hence tried to
organize and attend only the minimum possible number
of meetings. I performed all my duties to the best of my
abilities, but I had no intentions of continuing as an administrator
or manager after serving my required duty
period. My greatest achievement as department chair
at UCLA and at Oregon State University was the hiring of
outstanding new faculty members. I believe that at both
schools the level of teaching and research was much improved
during my tenure as department head.
Question 5: You have achieved numerous successes
throughout your career, which were deservedly recognized
by your peers through awards, honorary doctoral
degrees, honorary professorships, etc. What is the
achievement that you are most proud of and why?
Answer 5: I am proud of the large number of my
accomplished former students. Most of them went to
industry, and did very well there, but a few ended up
in academia. Occasionally, I meet engineers who claim
to be my " grand-students " , i.e., students of my former
students, and on a few occasions, I even met my greatgrand-students!
I
am also proud of a few of my original ideas, which
impacted circuit design all over the area. Finally, I am
proud of my many co-authored books on analog circuit
design, which have been translated into Chinese,
Japanese, Russian and even Persian.
Question 6: Throughout your prolific professional and
colorful career, you have accomplished many different
SECOND QUARTER 2022
IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q2 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q2 2022
