ASU faculty member honored with prestigious semiconductor research award

The semiconductor industry is reshaping Arizona’s economic future, driving billions in investments, bolstering workforce development and reshaping the state into a national tech hub.

As this industry’s footprint continues to fortify statewide, one ASU researcher is being recognized for work critical to technologies impacting semiconductor quality and reliability.

Krishnendu Chakrabarty, the Fulton Professor of Microelectronics in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU, is a leading authority on microelectronics. He has been recognized as a leader in design-for-test methodologies, which have received awards and been adopted for industry and government uses.

Chakrabarty’s recognitions include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award early in his career, as well as prestigious senior-level honors including election as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society.

In academia, he serves as a dedicated professor with over 20 years of work funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, a consortium that brings together technology companies, academia, government agencies and SRC’s highly regarded engineers and scientists.

Each year, the SRC recognizes faculty working on sponsored research and contributors among its industry members through award programs that highlight achievements in technical excellence, research, mentoring and innovation.

This week, Chakrabarty received the SRC 2025 Innovation Award, which acknowledges adoption of research and intellectual property by semiconductor companies.

“This award provides a strong endorsement of the impact of my research,” Chakrabarty says. “It encourages to me to continue collaborating with semiconductor companies to develop innovative technologies that can be deployed to increase product quality and reliability, reduce cost and make emerging technologies that benefit society more affordable.”

Chakrabarty developed a patented, novel design-for-test architecture that enables pre-bond parametric testing of through-silicon vias. This technology allows for early defect detection and improves yield and reliability in advanced 3D integrated circuits.

His work has been widely recognized and adopted in the semiconductor industry, including by companies such as Intel, Mentor Graphics (now Siemens), Samsung, TSMC, NXP Semiconductor and Qualcomm.

Chakrabarty’s patented technology addresses a key challenge in die stacking: how to verify the quality of bare dies before they’re bonded together. His invention enables noninvasive testing by integrating design-for-test infrastructure into the dies. The solution enables pass/fail testing, fault localization and defect size analysis.

Chakrabarty says this innovation will enable major breakthroughs in integrated circuits for AI and mobile computing, impacting devices used in smartphones and related technologies that affect our daily lives in numerous ways.

Zachary Holman, a professor and vice dean for research and innovation in the Fulton Schools, underscores how Chakrabarty’s meritorious work has reshaped the semiconductor industry and elevated ASU’s position at the forefront of innovation.

“Professor Chakrabarty is the embodiment of delivering innovation that matters, a Fulton Schools of Engineering core value,” says Holman. “This SRC Innovation Award recognizes his impressive impact through research. He is not only hugely prolific, he has published over 950 research papers and been granted 24 patents. But his work, including the patent on the design-for-test architecture that was the basis for this award, has also transformed the semiconductor industry.”

This latest honor continues a pattern of recognition for Chakrabarty’s efforts and dedication to working with the SRC and its collaborators.

In 2018, while serving as the John Cocke Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, Chakrabarty received the Rama Divakaruni Technical Excellence Award for pioneering solutions to the test challenges for 3D integrated circuits. The award recognizes key contributors to innovative technology that significantly enhances competitiveness and productivity in the semiconductor industry.

After joining ASU in 2022, Chakrabarty received the SRC Aristotle Award, which recognizes SRC-supported faculty for their outstanding mentorship of graduate students.

Chakrabarty says he is honored and humbled to receive another award from the SRC that specifically highlights innovative achievements.

“The cohort group of these awardees is a veritable who’s who in semiconductor microelectronics, including university presidents, deans and members of the National Academy of Engineering,” he says. “I owe this success to multiple generations of outstanding students who have taught me as much as I have taught them, to my many collaborators over the years and to those who have mentored me at various stages of my career.”

Accolades aside, Chakrabarty has dedicated his time to transforming Arizona and ASU into a thriving semiconductor ecosystem.

“These awards provide strong encouragement for me to continue utilizing my network to build large consortia and ecosystems for research and workforce development at ASU and in Arizona,” Chakrabarty says.

“The faculty and students at Arizona universities are truly outstanding. My goal is to build bridges and teams that can bring together complementary expertise to solve the most challenging industry problems."

His efforts to foster collaboration and position ASU as a leading microelectronics institution are highlighted by his founding of the ASU Center for Semiconductor Microelectronics in 2023. The center brings together faculty, students, alumni, industry partners and U.S. government agencies to further the advancement of research, workforce development, and the commercialization and adoption of advancing technology.

Chakrabarty also serves as the chief technology officer of the Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub, or SWAP Hub. Led by ASU, the SWAP Hub is one of eight regional innovation centers established by the U.S. Department of War's Microelectronics Commons, a national strategic initiative to accelerate the development and production of microelectronics technologies critical to national security and defense.

With more than 30 years of experience in university research and technology transition to industry, he is playing a major role in the SWAP Hub by identifying technologies with an optimal “readiness level” for transition to fabrication to fill gaps through strategic partnerships.

With an established record and reputation for excellence, Chakrabarty says he is confident serving as a role model for students, young researchers and colleagues, with the aim of attracting the best talent to the SWAP Hub and ASU.