Asad Abidi

Asad Ali Abidi PhD (born July 12, 1956) is a Pakistani electrical engineer who serves as a tenured professor at University of California, Los Angeles and is the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at LUMS.

Born and raised in Pakistan, Abidi received his B.S. from the Imperial College London followed by a M.S. and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. He worked as an electrical engineer with Bell Labs and in January 1985 joined UCLA as a tenured academic. In 2007, he left for a three year sabbatical to work as a founding dean of the engineering school at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and returned to Los Angeles in 2009. In 2017, he was named as the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at LUMS.

Abidi is a prominet academic and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and The World Academy of Sciences. He received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits in 2008 In 2015, UC, Berkeley recognised him as a distinguished alumnus for his contributions to the theory and practice of analog and RF circuits.

Abidi was educated at Cadet College Hasan Abdal, Pakistan, and gained a B.Sc. degree (with first-class honours) in electrical engineering at Imperial College, London, in 1976. Later he attended University of California, Berkeley; he gained an M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering in 1978 and a Ph.D in 1981 under the supervision of Robert Meyer. Abidi is a IEEE Fellow and a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He joined LUMS School of Science and Engineering as its first Dean.

Since 1985, Abidi worked at UCLA, where he is currently a Distinguished Chancellor's Professor. From 1981 to 1984, he worked for Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff at the Advanced LSI Development Laboratory. He was a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Hewlett Packard Laboratories in 1989. He is one of only a few Pakistani-origin members of the NAE. and was recognized as an ISSCC top-ten author. Abidi served as the Program Secretary for the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) from 1984 to 1990, and was the General Chairman of the Symposium on VLSI Circuits in 1992. He was the Secretary of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council from 1990 to 1991. From 1992 to 1995, he was the Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

• 2013 Armstrong Memorial Lecturer, Columbia University
• 2013 ISSCC Outstanding Contributor over its 60 years
• 2012 Best Paper Award, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (co-winner)
• 2012 ISSCC Distinguished Technical Paper Award
• 2009 Third World Academy of Sciences
• 2008 UCLA HSSEAS Lockheed Martin Award for Excellence in Teaching
• 2008 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits
• 2007 National Academy of Engineering
• Top 10 contributors to the ISSCC in its 50-year history
• 2000 IEEE Third Millennium Medal
• 1998 Design Contest Award at the Design Automation Conference
• 1997 ISSCC Jack Raper Outstanding Technology Directions Paper Award
• 1997 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award
• 1996 Best Paper Award of the 21st European Solid State Circuits Conference
• 1988 TRW Award for Innovative Teaching Postdoctoral Research Associate

• An IEEE Fellow (1996)
• A member of the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE) (2007)
• Associate Fellow, Third World Academy of Sciences (2009)