Modern life depends on digital devices, but our world is analog. Without conversion between analog and digital, there would be no communication, sensing, and computing. Defying expectations, analog to digital converter circuits (ADCs) improved in energy efficiency by more than three orders of magnitude over 20 years. These improvements paved the way for smart prostheses for Parkinson’s disease, high-bandwidth wireless connectivity, digital radar, and accurate speech recognition in noisy environments. Recently analog circuits aided by analog to digital conversion are upending computing. Eighty years after the dawn of digital computing, analog computing may power the explosive growth in artificial intelligence.

BIO
Michael P. Flynn received the Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. From 1988 to 1991, he was with the National Microelectronics Research Centre in Cork, Ireland. He was with National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, CA, from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 to 1997, he was a Member of Technical Staff with Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX. During the four-year period from 1997 to 2001, he was with Parthus Technologies, Cork, Ireland. Dr. Flynn joined the University of Michigan in 2001, and is currently Professor and the Fawwaz T Ulaby Collegiate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His technical interests are in RF circuits, data conversion, biomedical systems and analog computing.

Michael Flynn is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. He received 2020 Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award and the 2016 University of Michigan Faculty Achievement Award. He is a recipient of the 2020 Intel Outstanding Researcher Award. Flynn received the 2011 Education Excellence Award and the 2010 College of Engineering Ted Kennedy Family Team Excellence Award from the College from Engineering at the University of Michigan. He received the 2005-2006 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He received the NSF Early Career Award in 2004.

Dr. Flynn was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits from 2013 to 2016. He is a former Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. He served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits (JSSC) and of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems. He served on Technical Program Committees of the International Solid State Circuits (ISSSC), the Symposium on VLSI Circuits, the European Solid State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) and the Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (ASSCC). He was sub-committee chair for data conversion at ISSCC from 2018 to 2022.