Payam Heydari

Payam Heydari serves as the Henry Samueli Faculty Excellence Professor and University Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science within the Engineering faculty at the University of California, Irvine. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and directs the Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits (NCIC) Laboratories. Heydari obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees with honors in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 1992 and 1995, respectively, followed by a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2001. His early professional experience includes summer internships at Nokia Bell Labs in 1997, where he focused on noise analysis in high-speed CMOS integrated circuits, and at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in 1998, investigating gradient-based optimization and sensitivity analysis of custom analog/RF ICs.

Heydari's research interests center on the design of terahertz, millimeter-wave, radio-frequency, and analog integrated circuits for emerging applications such as brain-machine interfaces, sensing and imaging, and gigabit wireless communications. He is the co-author of two books, three book chapters, and more than 200 journal and conference papers. Notable publications include “Millimeter-wave massive MIMO: The next wireless revolution?” published in IEEE Communications Magazine in 2014, “A CMOS 210-GHz fundamental transceiver with OOK modulation” in IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits in 2014, and “A single-chip dual-band 22–29-GHz/77–81-GHz BiCMOS transceiver for automotive radars” in the same journal in 2009. His work has earned prestigious recognitions, including IEEE Fellowship for contributions to silicon-based millimeter-wave integrated circuits and systems, National Academy of Inventors Fellowship in 2022, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship, the 2024 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Best Paper Award (co-recipient), 2023 IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Educator Award, 2021 IEEE SSCS Innovative Education Award, NSF CAREER Award in 2005, and numerous best paper and teaching awards. Heydari has delivered keynote speeches, such as at IEEE GlobalSIP 2013, served as Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE SSCS (2014-2016) and MTT-S (2019-2022), and contributed editorially as Associate Editor for IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, among others. He is a member of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society AdCom and various conference technical program committees, underscoring his significant impact in the field.

Professional Email: payam@uci.edu