UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) named Swaroop Ghosh, professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), a fellow. This is the highest professional distinction available for academic inventors, awarded to only a select group of outstanding professionals each year. Ghosh will be officially inducted alongside the rest of the 2025 fellows class at the 15th Annual NAI Conference on June 4 in Los Angeles.
“On behalf of the College of Engineering, it’s my honor to congratulate Dr. Ghosh for joining the growing group of professors from Penn State recognized for their outstanding efforts by the NAI,” said Tonya L. Peeples, Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering. “These successes are a testament to the caliber of our engineering faculty and to Penn State’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible through innovation. I am excited to see how Swaroop continues to accelerate impact through his work.”
Ghosh joins two other EECS faculty members who have been awarded the fellow title in the last three years: Qiming Zhang, the Harvey F. Brush Chair of Electrical Engineering, who received the honor in 2023, and Anand Sivasubramaniam, distinguished professor of computer science, who received the honor in 2024. Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of nuclear engineering and of materials science and engineering at Penn State, was also named a fellow this year.
The NAI consists of more than 4,600 individual members from over 260 institutions worldwide, with the NAI Fellows Program highlighting members whose patents and licensed technologies have helped create an estimated $3.8 trillion dollars in revenue across various commercial and research industries.
“NAI fellows are a driving force within the innovation ecosystem, and their contributions across scientific disciplines are shaping the future of our world,” said Paul R. Sanberg, president of the NAI. “We are thrilled to welcome this year’s class of fellows to the Academy. They are truly an impressive cohort, and we look forward to honoring them at our 15th Annual Conference in Los Angeles next year.”
Ghosh was nominated for his work in the field of memory design and security, with his patented innovations including local and global sense amplifiers, power-efficient wordline drivers that helped reduce the size of semiconductor memories and a static random access memory design that was commercialized in AI chips. His suggested best practices for hardware design and security have heavily influenced the technological development of over 25 major semiconductor manufacturers including Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm and AMD.
“Swaroop’s designs have been implemented into the hardware powering laptops, desktop systems, servers and more, impacting millions of users each year,” said Tom La Porta, director of the School of EECS and Evan Pugh Professor. “It’s invigorating to see a member of our faculty recognized for their significant contributions to a field that plays such an important role in the global economy.”
Ghosh has contributed to over 230 papers, 15 U.S. patents and eight book chapters discussing semiconductor design. He has received more than 20 awards for excellence in research, teaching and advising. He earned best paper awards at the 2025 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust Conference, the International Symposium on Very Large Scale Integration Quantum Workshop and the 2025 and 2024 Great Lakes Symposium on Very Large Scale Integration Conference. He also received the 2025 Graduate Faculty Teaching Award from Penn State and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools’ Geoffrey Marshall Mentoring Award in 2024.
Previously, Ghosh was named a fellow of the IEEE for his work on memory security and design used in technology nodes, and a fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association for research achievements in artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery and autonomous systems. He is also recognized as a member of the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence for pioneering contributions to AI used in drug discovery, quantum machine learning, hardware security and energy-efficient computing.
“Being elected as NAI fellow is an incredible honor,” Ghosh said. “It reflects the strong support of my nominator, current and former colleagues, collaborators, mentors and well-wishers who have been part of my industrial and academic journey, as well as the hard work of my students. I cannot thank my family enough for their unwavering support and encouragement, without which this achievement would not have been possible.”