John A. McNeill was named the Bernard M. Gordon Dean of Engineering in June 2021. McNeill joined WPI in 1994 after nearly a decade in industry and served as the interim Dean of Engineering from September 2018 until being appointed Dean.
A senior member of IEEE and a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, the National Academy of Inventors, and the Council for Undergraduate Research, McNeill received a bachelor’s degree in engineering sciences from Dartmouth College, an MS in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Boston University.
His PhD work was a collaboration with Analog Devices to develop design techniques to reduce noise in integrated oscillators used in telecommunication systems. He continues to maintain close ties to industry as founding director of the New England Center for Analog and Mixed Signal Design, a university-industry collaborative that conducts research on cutting-edge mixed signal (analog + digital) integrated circuits and systems.
McNeill’s research interests include biomedical sensing, jitter (noise) in integrated oscillators, and digitally assisted calibration of analog-to-digital converters used in low-power sensor systems. Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (including a 1997 CAREER Award, the NSF’s most prestigious award for young faculty), other federal agencies, and industry, his research has resulted in six patents and over 60 peer-reviewed papers and conference presentations.
In 1999, McNeill received the WPI Board of Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Teaching and he has won the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Electrical Engineering Professor Award three times (in 2000, 2008, and 2013). In 1995 he received the Joseph S. Satin Distinguished Fellowship in Electrical Engineering at WPI. In 2007 he was one of the two inaugural recipients of WPI’s Chairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize, which honors outstanding faculty members for excellence “in all relevant areas of faculty performance.”
McNeill has served as a research and project advisor to numerous graduate and undergraduate students, often emphasizing design of cutting-edge mixed (analog + digital) integrated circuits and systems.
