Dr. Ali Keshavarzi

Vice President, R&D, Cypress Semiconductor

Dr. Ali Keshavarzi
"Brilliant professors, excellent engineering tradition, a world-class institution and a fine talented body of students create a magical formula for Purdue alumni to enrich their careers and lives. How fortunate a young man can be to become exposed to all these elements, to learn, to practice, to interact with the faculty and to gain confidence day by day. This young man starts his career at Intel in the 90’s and becomes a part of the digital revolution era and enjoys the mind-boggling advancement of the semiconductor industry. He moves on as a researcher and an entrepreneur and works with some of the legends of the industry to make a difference in the quality of people’s lives. He had not imagined any better scenario. This not-so-young man now gets an opportunity to thank Purdue and the finest ensemble of people here for preparing him for a journey through life and his gratifying career along with it. I am humbled by this honor. Since the day I found out about this recognition, I have been rejuvenated and even more determined to continue my participation in more impactful causes in the future and to find ways to give back to the engineering careers of young men and women that are starting now. The magical formula continues to work."
 

Dr. Ali Keshavarzi is Vice President of Research and Development at Cypress Semiconductor with over 20 years of industry experience. Currently Dr. Keshavarzi is working on advanced technologies, logic, SoC, SRAM and non-volatile technologies and design, 3DIC, and R&D requirements of internal Cypress start-ups.  

Prior to Cypress, Dr. Keshavarzi was a Fellow and Director of Advanced Technology Architecture at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, focused on defining 14nm technology architecture to enable launching a variety of SoC products for a broad range of systems and applications.  Previously, Dr. Keshavarzi worked at TSMC as a Director of Design and Technology Platforms defining and leading device and circuit co-optimization for the 20nm technology platform. Dr. Keshavarzi started his career at Intel Corporation, working in various roles, most recently as a Principal Research Scientist at Intel Labs in low-power/high-performance circuit techniques and transistor device structures for future generations of microprocessors.

Dr. Keshavarzi has more than 40 patents, over 40 papers, has received best-paper awards, and has received the Intel Achievement Award (IAA). Dr. Keshavarzi has served on the TPC committees of ISSCC, IEDM, A-SSCC, ISLPED, ISQED and was the general chair of ISLPED. Dr. Keshavarzi delivered an invited talk at IEDM 2011 on architecting a FinFET-based technology platform to design SoCs in 14nm and beyond.

Dr. Keshavarzi earned a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 2000 and 1990, respectively.