Jim Plummer was born in Toronto Canada. He received his B.S. degree from UCLA and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in EE from Stanford University. He is currently the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the John Fluke Professor in EE at Stanford.
His early work focused on high voltage silicon integrated circuits. A major focus of his work over many years has been on silicon process modeling. This work resulted in the development of SUPREM, which has become the standard process modeling CAD tool used worldwide today. His recent work has focused on nanoscale silicon devices for logic and memory.
Since becoming Dean of Engineering at Stanford in 1999, Dr. Plummer has increasingly focused on engineering education issues. At the undergraduate level, he has been an outspoken advocate for engineering curricula including skills that extend beyond just a technical education. At the graduate level, a major innovation was the creation of Stanford’s new Bioengineering Department in 2002.
Dr. Plummer is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the IEEE. His research awards include the 1991 Gordon Moore Medal for Solid State Science and Technology, the 2001 Semiconductor Industry Association University Research Award, the 2003 IEEE J. J. Ebers Award and the 2007 IEEE Andrew Grove award. He has graduated over 80 Ph.D. students and published more than 400 journal papers and conference presentations. These papers have won 8 best paper awards. He has also received three teaching awards at Stanford. He serves on the Board of Directors of several public companies including Intel and Cadence.
