A. Richard Newton received the B. Eng. and M.Eng.Sci degrees from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1973 and 1975 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978. He is currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1979 he has been actively involved as a researcher and teacher in the areas of design technology, electronic system architecture, and integrated circuit design.
From 1986-1988 he was Vice Chairman for Computing Resources in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Dr. Newton was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design for Integrated Circuits from 1984-1988 and a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society 1985-1988. Professor Newton has helped with many design technology conferences and workshops over the years and was Technical Program Chair of the 1988 and 1989 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conferences, Vice Chair of the 1990 Conference and was General Chair of the Conference in 1991.
He has received a number of awards for his teaching and research, including Best Paper Awards at the 1988 European Solid State Circuits Conference, the 1987 and 1989 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conferences, and the International Conference on Computer Design, and he was selected in 1987 as the national recipient of the C. Holmes McDonald Outstanding Young Professor Award of the Eta-Kappa-Nu Engineering Honor Society. In 1989 he was co-recipient of a Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions for Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems.
He was a Founding Member of both the EDIF technical and steering committees, an advisor to the CAD Framework Initiative, and was also a Founding Member of EDAC.
In addition to his academic role, Professor Newton has helped to found a number of design technology companies, including SDA Systems (now Cadence Design Systems), PIE Design Systems (now Quickturn), Simplex Solutions, Crossbow, and Synopsys, where he recently rejoined the Board of Directors. He was also a founder and director of nChip, now a part of Flextronics, Inc., Aptix, and Objectivity, and was a director of Interconnectix (now a Mentor Graphics company).
Since 1988, he has acted as a Venture Partner with the Mayfield Fund, a high-technology venture capital partnership, where he has contributed to both the evaluation and early-stage development of over a dozen new companies and is presently a Member of the Board of Directors of three of them.
From November 1994 to July 1995, Professor Newton was the acting President and CEO of Silicon Light Machines (formerly Echelle, Inc), a development-stage company which is bringing to market a number of display systems based on the application of micromachined silicon light-valves.
Since 1997, he has been a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the Microsoft Research Laboratories. He is a Member of the ACM and a Fellow of the IEEE.
References: Edited from the Homepage of A. Richard Newton