Rao Tummala, a professor emeritus in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), has been honored with having an IEEE Technical Field Award named in his honor – the IEEE Rao Tummala Electronics Packaging Award.

The IEEE currently bestows 37 Technical Field Awards representing each of its societies. The IEEE Rao Tummala Electronics Packaging Award is one of the highest IEEE honors recognizing the outstanding and exceptional contributions of individuals who advance electronics packaging and interconnection technologies at the device and systems levels and in science and manufacturing. 

In renaming this particular award, IEEE stated that Tummala is "the universally recognized luminary and technical leader of modern packaging science, technology, and manufacturing over the last five decades. Prof. Tummala is a once-in-a-generation visionary technologist, who provided unparalleled leadership in the industry (IBM), academia (Georgia Tech), professional societies (the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society and the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society), and around the globe in packaging research, technology development, manufacturing, and products, as well as in education and in industry-academic collaborations. Prof. Tummala’s combined impact on the industry, academia, and professional societies around the globe places him in the forefront of all packaging leaders in the history of the field.”

Tummala held the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in Electronics Packaging in ECE from 1993-2019 and was the founding director of the Microsystems Packaging Research Center (PRC), now known as the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center. He was also a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. The PRC pioneered the Second Law of Electronics (the first being Moore’s Law) with his System-on-Package vision. The Center involved faculty and students from ECE, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering and 40 companies from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He has published over 800 technical papers, holds 110 U.S. patents and inventions, and wrote the first modern reference book for microsystems packaging in 1988 and the first undergraduate textbook in 2001. He has published a total of seven text and reference books. 

“We have been very fortunate to have had Rao as a leader and ambassador for many years,” said Magnus Egerstedt, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and ECE Professor. “All of us in the School would like to thank Rao for all of his hard work and dedication and for all that he has done for ECE, Georgia Tech, and the engineering field.”