Robert Brodersen

1945 - 2024

Robert Brodersen
November 1, 1945 - February 1, 2024
Berkeley, Calif. - Robert William Brodersen passed away at his home in Berkeley from leukemia on February 1, 2024 at the age of 78 after battling several cancers over the last decade.
Bob was born November 1, 1945 in Brush, Colo., to Iver and Lela Brodersen. He attended California Polytechnic State University, Pomona graduating in 1966 with BS degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. He continued his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, achieving his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1968 and 1972.
Bob met his partner in life's adventures Shelagh in Boston. While in school they enjoyed swimming, hiking, and cycling. After his graduation from MIT they married on June 8, 1972 in Fullerton, Calif.
Bob started his professional career in Dallas, Texas with Texas Instruments. He loved the innovative research environment. They spent their weekends canoeing in the Guadalupe Mountains and hiking and cycling in Colorado. In 1976 after three years at TI, he was offered his dream position as a member of the EECS Department faculty at UC Berkeley. He enjoyed pursuing research with several generations of graduate students in the fields of RF and digital wireless communications, signal processing applications, and IC design methodologies.
In 1998, he was instrumental in founding the Berkeley Wireless Research Center, a consortium involving university researchers, industrial partners, and governmental agencies. He retired in 2006 as Professor Emeritus but continued mentoring and co-advising students at BWRC.
While at Berkeley Bob and Shelagh enjoyed hiking the John Muir Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail among many other adventures in the wilderness and bicycling in many parts of the world. Their best memories are hiking and cycling all over the world with each other, students and friends.
Among the many awards and recognitions Bob received were the 1980 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award with Paul R. Gray and David A. Hodges, the 1983 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award for "pioneering contributions and leadership in research on switched-capacitor circuits for analog-digital conversion and filtering", the 1997 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Award for "contributions to the design of integrated circuits for signal processing systems", the 1998 ACM SIGMOBILE Computing Award for his work on the InfoPad project (1992–1997). In 1999, he received a Technologie Doctor Honoris Causa from Lund University in Sweden, and he was inducted into the Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering Hall of Fame Class of 2015.
His most notable awards were the IEEE Edison Medal in 2016, the IEEE Millenium Medal in 2000 and his election as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1988.
Bob will always be remembered for the time and care he spent mentoring numerous young engineers and students. His commitment to education and mentorship has made a lasting impact on the field of electrical engineering. His friends and colleagues describe him as a person who they knew would always "have their back" and encouraged them to "just try it, you can do it. This can't be that complicated."
He was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his wife, Shelagh; sister and brother-in-law, Kay and Brian Pitts; sister-in-law, Adrienne Malley; many nieces and nephews; and their treasured dogs, Mia and Torres.
A celebration of life will be held later this year. Donations to the Robert W. Brodersen Fellowship in EECS (FW8524000) would be greatly appreciated. They can be made at the UC Berkeley Foundation online at https://give.berkeley.edu/brodersen or by calling Gifts Services at 510-643-9789. The fellowship is used to provide full support to a graduate student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program.