Prof. Patrick Mercier

Brief biography: Patrick Mercier received the B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2006, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

He is currently a Full Professor and Vice Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where he is also the co-Director of the Center for Wearable Sensors and the Site Director of the Power Management Integration Center. His research interests include the design of energy-efficient microsystems, focusing on the design of RF circuits, power converters, and sensor interfaces for miniaturized systems and biomedical applications.

Prof. Mercier has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, including 30 ISSCC papers, 34 JSSC papers, and several papers in high-impact journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Electronics, Nature Communications, Advanced Science, and more. He has received numerous awards, including a Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) Julie Payette fellowship in 2006, NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships in 2007 and 2009, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship in 2009, the 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper at ISSCC 2010, a Graduate Teaching Award in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD in 2013, the Hellman Fellowship Award in 2014, the Beckman Young Investigator Award in 2015, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2015, the UC San Diego Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016, the Biocom Catalyst Award in 2017, the NSF CAREER Award in 2018, a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Lecture in 2019, the San Diego County Engineering Council Outstanding Engineer Award in 2020, the ECE Teacher of the Year Award in 2023, and the ISSCC Author Recognition Award in 2023. He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (TVLSI), the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS), and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of ISSCC, and has served on the technical program committees for ISSCC, CICC, and the VLSI Symposium. Prof. Mercier was the co-editor of Ultra-Low-Power Short Range Radios (Springer, 2015) Power Management Integrated Circuits (CRC Press, 2016), and High-Density Electrocortical Neural Interfaces (Academic Press, 2019).

Professional Highlights:

  • Currently leading a ~20-person group undertaking high-impact research spanning multiple domains, from near-zero-power integrated circuits, power management, energy harvesting, neural interfaces, wearable physiochemical sensors, RFICs and RF systems, and beyond
  • Over 200 peer-reviewed publications, including 30 ISSCC papers, 34 JSSC papers, and several papers in high-impact journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Communications, Advanced Science, Energy and Environmental Science, and more
  • Co-founder and co-director of the successfully industry-supported UCSD Center for Wearable Sensors
  • Site Director of the successfully industry/NSF-supported IUCRC Power Management Integration Center, partnered with Dartmouth College
  • Recognized as one of the top contributors of all time at the 2023 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)
  • Multiple young investigator awards: DARPA YFA, NSF CAREER, Beckman YIA
  • ISSCC Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper
  • Over $24MM in research fundraising (2012-2019)
  • UCSD-wide Academic Senate Teaching Award, ECE Teacher of the Year Award, and ECE Best Graduate Teacher Award
  • ISSCC, VLSI, and CICC TPC member
  • IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Distinguished Lecturer (2019-2021)
  • Startup co-founder (Traq), board member (QuantalRF), and scientific advisory board member (Nanovision, Neurovigil)
  • Expert witness in patent litigation cases

Mailing address:

Prof. Patrick Mercier
University of California, San Diego
3180 Voigt Dr,
Franklin Antonio Hall,
La Jolla, CA 92093

Email address:

pmercier@ucsd.edu