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Prominent Ethiopian scientist at MIT receives award

Posted on , Updated on by Elias Kifle

Professor Dereje Agonafer, a prominent Ethiopian scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has received an award for significant contribution in the thermomechanical field last week, March 20, 2008.

Professor Dereje Agonafer
Professor Dereje Agonafer

As the Electronic Packaging industry develops technologies for fabrication of smaller, faster, economical and reliable products; thermal management and design play an important role. Following MooreEs Law, the number of transistors on a single on “high density interconnect” chip has exceeded a billion. The feature size of the die, however, is not changing much leading to a significant increase in power density. Coupled with the increased dynamic power, is the fast increasing static power caused by leakage current (the gate oxide thickness for 90nm nodes is only 1.2nm). The push for multi-core processors and high k dielectric is partly attributed to this leakage current. In this paper, the author will discuss the studies that he and his graduate students in cooperation with numerous industry colleagues have conducted in the last ten years in the area of thermo/mechanical challenges in electronics cooling/packaging. The discussion will include stacked packaging and the related thermo/mechanical challenges; efforts to reduce thermal resistance due to highly non-uniform chip power distribution, development of a best known method (BKM) for design of microprocessors based on power and thermal-architectural co-design, thermal challenge related to leakage current, effect of weight of heat sink assembly on mechanical reliability of a wire bonded plastic ball grid array package, bump electromigration and back end design rules, development of constitutive equations for lead free solders and some discussion on data centers and related energy management.

Professor Agonafer received his PhD from Howard University and joined IBM. After 15 years at IBM, in 1999, Dr. Dereje Agonafer joined the University of Texas at Arlington as Professor and Director of Electronics, MEMS, and Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center). He currently advises 16 graduate students including 6 PhDEs. Since joining UTA in 1999, he has graduated 53 graduate students. The research areas cover a broad area in electronic packaging including stacked packaging and the related thermo/mechanical challenges; efforts to reduce thermal resistance due to highly non-uniform chip power distribution, development of a best known method (BKM) for design of microprocessors based on power and thermal-architectural co-design, thermal challenge related to leakage current, effect of weight of heat sink assembly on mechanical reliability of a wire bonded plastic ball grid array package, bump electromigration and back end design rules, development of constitutive equations for lead free solders and thermal management of data centers. Professor Agonafer has published over 100 conference and journal papers and eight issued patents. In April 1998, Professor Agonafer was the recipient of the “The University of Colorado School of Engineering Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (DEAA) in the category of Research and Invention.” In November 1998, he received “The Howard University Distinguished PhD Alumni Award.” Also, in November 1998, he received “ASME K-16/EEPD Clock Award for Outstanding Contribution in Computer Aided Thermal Management of Electronic Packages.” In 2002, he received ASME International Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division Highest Division Award for “Outstanding Contributions to the Area of the Application of the Science and Engineering of Heat Transfer to Electronic and Photonic Packaging.” He is currently the Editor in Chief of ASME Press Book Series in Electronic Packaging and Associate Editor of the Journal of Electronic Packaging. From July 1997 – July 2000, he served as Chair of the ASME K-16 Committee in the Heat Transfer Division. Professor Agonafer is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International and a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is currently on a leave of absence as a Dr. Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT in the Mechanical Engineering Department.

Source: Semi-Therm

28 thoughts on “Prominent Ethiopian scientist at MIT receives award”

  3. Congratulations Prof.Dereje!!!
    You are a good motivator for the young generation.
    Good luck for the rest of your life,Prof.!
    Ethiopians are successful because of their hardwork.

  7. Prof. Dereje Agonafir,
    I am very proud of you and my sincere congratulations for your scientific achievement. You must have worked very hard indeed to achieve so much. You are a source of pride for your family, your compatriots and to your mother land Ethiopia.
    Wonderful! and very best wishes in your future undertakings,
    Yours,
    Haile Gabriel

  8. Professor Agonafir
    I would like to say congratulations for you effort and success.Our country “Ethiopia” have a scholar like you and keep up the good work.
    Live from DC

  14. Congraduation Prof. derege Agonafir, you have done very well in your life. And Congradulation to your family, country men and women. I am proud of you and may God bless you and your carrier. I know ethiopia has well skilled professionals unfortunately they are unable to share their skills and knowledge to its people in their homeland. once up on a time this will happen. God bless ethiopia.

  17. proffessor dereje congratulation!!! and i would like to thank ethio review for bringing such an inspiration and sophisticated brother.knowledge and education are the key for any nation success.

  20. Dr. Derege,

    As a graduate of mechanical engineering with undergrad level, I can imagine how tough moments you have passed through which ultimately have put you on the stage you are now. It seems very easy to accomplish and gain all this successes, but to me you are the very outstanding person that we Ethiopians are very proud of you. I now become very inspired to continue my career to go to Grauate School. God bless you, but finally I strongly urge you to contribute a little to your country by exposing this dictatorial government led by TPLF to the most professional environments that you involved in by any chance, so that we can together fight the TPLF regime in order to over come our epidemic problems including famine, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS/HIV and many more problems that have been an obstacle to our people from becoming a productive generation. I am hoping you have been doing your best, however I don’t have any evidence so decided to point out my biggest concern along with my admiration and appreciations to your work since I do expect a lot from each individual to be an effective participant in bringing Ethiopia together with productivity and prosperity, especially from the Ethiopian elite like you.
    Again, Dr. Derege congratulations and many more accomplishments in your future endeavor.

  21. Congratulations! Prof.Derege Agonafir. Although human being has instinct and learned behaviours. You have proved us that through learning acheivement is possible. I would like to thank the Ethiopian review for updating me in such Golden situation.

  22. Something to crow about. Every ethiopian achievement is mine,deeply–what do you call this? But my question is when is the time to start contaminating children in ethiopia by such type of extraordinary Ethiopians?

    Wishing Pro. Dereje one day will go to ET and tell the kids that it is possible and possible and possible.

  23. Congratulation professor Dereje Agonafer.I wish you best for you and your family.One day you will do something great for our beloved country Ethiopia.
    You inspiring us a lot.Thank you!!!

    11 years old grade 6 from Montreal Canada.

  25. Congratulations dear Prof.Dereje!!!
    Like many of our country men, I’m also glad to hear such an outstanding achievement.Well done!
    It is also my deepest wish that you and other fellow scholars try to introduce these and other types of technology and civilization to those who still live in the middle age life style and who are totally stranger for these phenomenon in our home land and in our generation.
    May God Bless you in whatever you do.
    Tibebu from Munich

  28. I have never heard of you before and I wonder where the media is! You, Dr. Dereje, Make’s me and all Ethiopian’s really proud. I’m a Mechanical Engineering student with no vision of the future. U inspire me to build a long discipline of path for my future. And for that I deeply thank you.
    from Collageville, Minnesota.

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