Ali Darwish

Dr. Ali Darwish earned the B.Sc. and M.S. degrees with honors in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD. Additionally, he obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA.

He actively participated in DARPA’s wide bandgap program, taking on a leading role in the advancement of Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors. His focus encompassed addressing thermal challenges and introducing novel designs tailored for mm-wave frequencies. He developed the first analytical solution for heat propagation in GaN MMICs, devised techniques for temperature measurement, characterized GaN thermal dependencies, and pioneered methods for reducing self-heating. His technique significantly extended the lifetime of GaN transistors by an order of magnitude.

Furthermore, he innovated a mm-wave transmitter architecture based on frequency multiplication, showcasing the first-ever generation of complex-modulation signals above 100 GHz. This novel approach effectively overcomes numerous challenges associated with the classical mixer-based transmitter architecture.

Dr. Darwish served an associate editor of the IEEE Trans. on Microwave Theory and Tech. (MTT) 2019 – 2022, and the IEEE Microwave Magazine, an adjunct faculty member with Johns Hopkins University.  He is a Technical Execution Area co-lead for the Microelectronics Commons program. He is also a member of several technical program committees, including the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS). He organized and chaired several IMS workshops and focus sessions.  He is the ex-chair of the IEEE MTT-S technical committee on Wireless Power Transfer and Energy Conversion.  He co-authored over 150 journal and conference papers and holds 15 patents.  He currently serves as the chair of the Washington DC/North Virginia MTT chapter.