The 1999 Microwave Prize

Christopher Snowden received the BSc(Hons), MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Leeds, England. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the IEE and a Chartered Engineer. He is currently a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE (Electron Devices Society).

After graduating in 1977 he worked as an Applications Engineer for Mullard (now part of Philips), near London, England. His PhD studies were later conducted in association with Racal-MESL (Microwave Equipment Systems Limited) and were concerned with the large-sipat characterisation and design of MESFET microwave oscillators. In 1982 he was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Electronics at the University of York. He joined the Microwave Solid State Group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Leeds in 1983. During 1987 he was a Visiting Research Associate at the California Institute of Technology. In 1992 he was appointed to the Chair of Microwave Engineering at Leeds. During the period 1995-98 he was the Head of School and the Director of the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He joined Filtronic ptc. as Executive Director of Technology in October 1998, where he is responsible for the company's global technology and engineering.

He was a Consultant to M/A-COM Inc., Corporate Research and Development between 1989 and 1998. During 1989-91 he represented M/A-COM as Senior Staff Scientist, developing their semiconductor road-maps and laying the foundations for process-oriented design of devices and monolithic circuits based on physical modeling. His other major consultancies have included Lucas-Varity (automotive radar applications) and Filtronic Comtek (communications technology). He has many links with industry in the UK and USA and a hallmark of his work is the strong international support and investment which underpins his university research.

He is a member of several Technical Programme Committees for International Conferences and serves on the organizing committee of a number of IEEE conferences. He was Chairman of the 6th IEEE Terahertz Electronics Conference held in the UK in 1998 and was Chairman of the 1995 international Microwaves and RF Conference. He is Co-Chainnan of the IEEE MTT-1 Committee on Computer Aided Design and a Member of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Program Committee. He is a member of the IEEE Compound Semiconductor IC Technical Committee. He is a Member of the MIT Electromagnetics Academy. His personal research interests include compound semiconductor device modeling, advanced semiconductor device design, microwave, millimeter-wave and optical nonlinear circuit design.

He has written 8 books, over 200 refereed journal and conference papers, and many other articles. He has supervised 39 successful PhD candidates to-date all of whom have moved into successful careers in the international microwave industry.