UCLA Engineering Professor, Alum Inducted into National Academy of Inventors

C.K. Ken Yang, a professor and chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, and alumnus Adrian Tang have been selected to join the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) 2023 class of senior members.

The academy describes its senior members as “active faculty, scientists and administrators from NAI Member Institutions who have demonstrated remarkable innovation-producing technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society. They also have growing success in patents, licensing and commercialization, while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors.”

The pair were among 95 emerging academic inventors inducted at a recent NAI Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. They joined a group of 430 senior members affiliated with NAI member institutions worldwide.

Earlier this year, Yang also received a Distinguished Engineering Educator Achievement Award from the Engineers’ Council for his leadership in mentoring students and creating an innovative electrical and computer engineering curriculum. The nonprofit professional society recognizes individuals who are outstanding in professional quality and have a top reputation for engineering education, mentorship and leadership.

Yang, who joined UCLA Samueli in 1998 and became its Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Chair in 2020, has focused his research on mixed analog-and-digital circuit design and its impact on computing systems. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and is a pioneer in enabling multi-gigabit-per-second communication between processing elements. He has developed and introduced circuit techniques to overcome timing noise and data-bandwidth bottlenecks.

Tang, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip designer, completed his electrical engineering doctoral degree at UCLA Samueli in 2012 with a research focus on CMOS millimeter-wave imaging, CMOS sub-millimeter-wave imaging, CMOS millimeter-wave communications and CMOS radar systems. He received an Outstanding Young Engineer Award in 2021 from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, and the UCLA Samueli Rising Professional Alumni Achievement Award in 2019.