The basis for awarding this grant is exceptional promise as a graduate student working in the fields of the NPSS and exceptionally good work in those fields. Ildefonso’s research focuses on studying the effects of ionizing radiation on electronic devices, circuits, and systems designed using silicon-germanium (SiGe) technologies. 

The primary goal of Ildefonso’s work is to build more robust systems for space-based applications by identifying and implementing novel design strategies that improve the radiation tolerance of analog and RF circuits. Through internships at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., he has also worked on quantitatively correlating fundamental differences in charge deposition between heavy-ion- and laser-induced single-event transients (SETs) in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors. This effort aims to provide an additional tool to qualify electronics for space applications.  

Ildefonso received the B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in 2014 and the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech in 2017. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he is advised by John D. Cressler, the Schlumberger Chair Professor in Electronics. He was awarded the GEM Fellowship in 2014 and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2015.

Ildefonso’s research has been supported in part by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the National Science Foundation, and has resulted in 14 authored or co-authored peer-reviewed journal publications and four conference publications.