Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez - Biography#

Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez received a Ph.D. degree in Physics-Electronics (Univ. Sevilla, 1982). After stays in Univ. California at Berkeley and Texas A&M Univ., he became a Full Professor of Electronics at the Univ. of Sevilla in 1995.

He co-founded the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, a joint undertaken of the Spanish-CSIC and the Univ. de Sevilla, and started a Lab on Mixed-Signal Circuits. In 2001 he launched the company AnaFocus Ltd. and served as CEO until June 2009, when the company reached maturity as a worldwide provider of smart CMOS imagers. AnaFocus was founded on the basis of his patents. He holds eight patents.

His R&D addresses mixed-signal microelectronics for sensors and communications. He pioneered the application of deterministic chaos to instrumentation and communications. His team designed the first chips with controllable chaotic behavior and the first chaos-based MoDem chipset. He also pioneered the design of bio-inspired front-end chips for ultra-fast, energy efficient and compact vision systems. He designed three generations of vision chips which prompted ANAFOCUS and industrial applications. He contributed to structured mixed-signal design and data converter design. His team designed many high-performance mixed-signal chips, including analog front-ends for XDSL, ADCs for wireless communications and automotive sensors, MoDems for power-line communications and neuro-fuzzy interpolators, to mention a few. Many of them were state-of-the-art and some entered into production. He was also active in industrial training and produced two books on CMOS sigma-delta converters and teaching materials on ADCs that were delivered at companies and got the Quality Label of EuroPractice.

In all cases, Prof. Rodríguez-Vázquez has always been looking for the balance between pursuing risky research challenges and meeting industrial goals. The ample catalogue of his publications, patents, marketable chips and system implementations indicate that his vision of energy efficient mixed-signal systems with optimum analog and digital partitioning has resulted in tangible and valuable contributions and results.