Dr. Dereje Agonajer
Dereje Agonafer is a Jenkins Garrett Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. After receiving his PhD from Howard University, he worked for 15 years at IBM in the Office of former IBM Fellow Dick Chu, before joining The University of Texas at Arlington. He is currently advising 12 PhDs and 25 MSc students and has successfully advanced 95 graduate students. His current research areas are broad-ranging from his activities as Director of two centers – “Electronics MEMS and Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center” and the “NSF Industry University Collaborative Research Consortium (I/UCRC) in the area of Energy Efficient Systems.” Professor Agonafer and his team have published over 190 papers. He has served as Associate editor in both the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging and IEEE EPS Transactions. He is also Editor in Chief of the ASME Book Series in Electronic Packaging. He is a Fellow of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers International (ASME) and Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Currently he serves on the Dean’s Engineering Advisory Committee at both University of Colorado Boulder and Howard University, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of an NSF Center, MIRTHE, at Princeton University. As recognition for his contribution to the microelectronics industry, he received the Thermi Award at the 2008 24th Annual Semi-Therm Symposium in San Jose and The InterPACK Excellence Award at Interpack 2009 in San Francisco. Professor Agonafer was selected as the 2014 NSBE Golden Torch Award honoree for Golden Torch Legacy Award and will be saluted at the “17th Annual Golden Torch Awards (GTA)” to be held in March 2014 in Nashville, TN.