Biography

Joel L. Dawson joined MIT as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in September of 2004. He received his S.B. and MEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1996 and 1997, respectively. While attaining his MEng degree, Professor Dawson participated in the VI-A Internship program at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2003. During his doctoral research, Professor Dawson worked in the area of RF circuit design as a part of Professor Thomas H. Lee's research group. He investigated innovative techniques to improve power dissipation and linearity of power amplifiers, a key component of wireless systems. In 2003 he co-founded Aspendos Communications, a startup company based in San Jose, CA. Professor Dawson was also the recipient of an NSF Career Award in 2008 and was selected for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2009.

Research

The Dawson research group designs RF and mixed-signal CMOS ICs for communications systems and medical applications. Our research approach centers on the idea that we work in an extremely interesting era for such circuits. Economic forces favor a heavily digital chip, and it is often not profitable to make device and process concessions for the analog circuits. Given that we have millions of digital gates at our disposal, together with analog devices that are fast but otherwise far from ideal, what is the new optimal division of functionality between the analog and digital domains?

We seek answers to this question in part by exercising architectural creativity. In addition, we explore the application of mathematical optimization techniques to allocate resources between analog and digital subsystems.

A list of current projects can be found on the Research Group page.

Teaching

Prof. Dawson is involved in teaching 6.301 Solid-state Circuits, 6.302 Feedback Systems, and 6.776 High Speed Communications Circuits.

6.301: http://web.mit.edu/6.301/www/ Recitation Notes Click Here
6.302: http://web.mit.edu/6.302/www/ Recitation Notes Click Here
6.776: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/sp06/6.776/index.html