Nelson Lourenco was awarded the 2014 IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) Best Student Paper Award. Held July 13-18 in Paris, France, IEEE NSREC is the premier international forum for the presentation of advances in radiation effects in electronic devices, circuits, and systems.

Lourenco is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he is advised by John D. Cressler, the Schlumberger Chair Professor in Electronics.

Lourenco’s paper, entitled “On the Transient Response of a Complementary (npn + pnp) SiGe HBT BiCMOS Technology,” was coauthored with Cressler, Z.E. Fleetwood, P.S. Chakraborty, N.J.-H. Roche, A. Khachatrian, D. McMorrow, S.P. Buchner, J.S. Melinger, J.H. Warner, P. Paki-Amouzou, M. Kaynak, and B. Tillack. This work investigated the fundamental mechanisms associated with transient radiation events in silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology operating in space environments, and leveraged this understanding to suggest new strategies for the development of radiation-hardened systems using such SiGe technologies.

A full-length journal paper based upon the conference presentation has already been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, and will appear in December. This work was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Naval Research Laboratory, and IHP Microelectronics.