EDUCATION

Ph.D. Engineering Mechanics (1982); M.S. Engineering Mechanics (1979); M.S. Electrical Engineering (1978); B.S. Acoustics-Physics (1976); Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison.

EXPERIENCE

Professional Engineer (since 1979): State of Maryland (previously State of Wisconsin

Faculty: Distinguished Professor (2020), George E. Dieter Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering (1983–present), Professor of Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computation (2008–present), and Professor in Systems Engineering at the University of Maryland (1990–1994). Adjunct Professor in Risk Management at Yokohama National University (2016), Professor of Electrical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong (2008–2010). Visiting Professor in Reliability Engineering at Beihang University—China (2005–2013). Visiting Professor in Physics at Shanghai—JiaoTong University (2004–2007). Managed over 200 programs funded by both government and industry. Developed 12 courses associated with electronics products and systems, and prognostics and systems health management, authored more than 30 books, and graduated over 100 M.S. and 72 Ph.D. students.

Founder and Director: Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), having consortia in both Electronic Products and Systems, and Prognostics and Health Management, and supported by over 150 industry and government members, with a budget of over $6 million/yr, and graduating over 30 M.S. and Ph.D. students per year (1985 – 2020).

National Academy of Science/Engineering (NAE/NAS) Committees (invited to participate): Committee for reliability growth; Committee to investigate printed circuit board manufacturing in the U.S.; Committee to examine research needs in materials engineering; Committee to investigate automotive sudden acceleration and reliability (gave presentation but declined to participate).

Expert for Congressional Investigations: Committee on Energy & Commerce to investigate automotive reliability issues: Toyota sudden acceleration (2009–2010); and GM ignition – air bag recalls and NHTSA responses (2014).

FDA Expert: Taught reliability courses and aided FDA in assessing the reliability capability maturity assessment of manufacturers of medical devices, the techniques used to qualify devices, and medical device reliability and safety. (Sept. 2007–Sept. 2008)

Editor in Chief:  

●      Elsevier e-Prime Journal of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Energy (2021 – present)

●      ASME Open Journal of Engineering: first editor of the journal: (2021 – 2022)

●      Life Cycle Reliability and Safety Engineering, Springer (2012 – 2021)

●      Circuit World (2019–2020)

●      IEEE Access (2012–2018): first editor of the journal; 2015 PROSE Award winner in the subject category of “Journal/Best New STM (Scientific, Technical, and Medical)”. Selected for Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index in 2015. (also senior editor from 2020 – 2021)

●      International Journal of Performability Engineering (2009–2012)

●      Microelectronics Reliability, Elsevier (1996–2012)

●      IEEE Transactions on Reliability (1988–1997)

Vice President: PASS Inc., Initiated programs under both U.S. Army and Air Force contracts to determine the storage reliability of electronic equipment and to develop assessment methods for long term storage and dormancy reliability. Resigned as Vice President (1990–1993), but served as a consultant for ERS Inc. until 1998.

Vice President: Ramsearch Inc., Established company and awarded $1.5M to develop a concurrent electrical engineering decision support system. Won contracts to research temperature-dependent IC failures. Was bought out in 1991. (1988–1991)

Scientist: Engineering Research Center, Madison, WI: Worked on reliability assessment of Astro I Space Telescope. (1983)

Civil Service Electronics Technician: High Energy Physics at the University of Wisconsin and at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. Developed electronics instrumentation. (1971–1975)

Selected Research and Organizational Accomplishments

●      2021, $1.5M contract with Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. Center for Advanced Innovations in Reliability and Safety.

●      2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, Prof. Pecht has been identified by Clarivate as one of the Highly Cited Researchers for his exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, 2023 in Web of Science. Highly Cited Researchers are among those who have demonstrated significant and broad influence reflected in their publication of multiple papers, highly cited by their peers over the course of the last decade. In 2023, there were about 7000 people who had this honour worldwide. At the University of Maryland, there were only three people with this distinction.

●      2017, Chairman for IEEE 1856, “Standard Framework for Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) of Electronic Systems”. This standard describes a normative framework for classifying PHM capability and for planning the development of PHM for an electronic system or product.

●      2012, Selected to be the Editor in Chief of the new IEEE Access journal. This journal was awarded the 2015 PROSE Award in the subject category of “Journal/Best New STM (Scientific, Technical, and Medical).” Grew the journal to revenues of over $8M per year by 2018.

●      2010, Established a battery health management and prognostics research program at CALCE, with over $1M funding from NSF, U.S. Navy, and the CALCE members.

●      2008, Initiated prognostics and system’s health management research at the City University of Hong Kong and within southern China. Received over US $3M in grant funding from the Hong Kong government.

●      2007, Established the CALCE Prognostics and Health Management Consortium at the University of Maryland. This was the first diagnostics, prognostics, and system health management consortium for electronics in the world.

●      2005, Developed a new paradigm for reliability prediction of electronics based on prognostics, whereby sensor data can be integrated with models that enable in-situ assessment of the deviation or degradation of a product from an expected normal operating condition and the prediction of the future state of reliability. Developed prognostics roadmap for inclusion in the ITRI semiconductor roadmap.

●      2005, Chairman for IEEE Organizational Reliability Capability Standard 1624, which defines the reliability capability of organizations and identifies the criteria for assessing the reliability capability of an organization.

●      2004, Developed the concept of physics-of-failure for electronics reliability and the Failure Modes, Mechanism and Effects Analysis (FMMEA), which became formalized in a series of JEDEC Standards, including: JEDEC-STD-148, titled “Reliability Qualification of Semiconductor Devices Based on Physics of Failure Risk and Opportunity Assessment;” JESD34, titled “Failure-Mechanism-Driven Reliability Qualification of Silicon Devices;” JESD47, titled “Stress-Test Driven Qualification of Integrated Circuits;” and JESD94, titled “Application Specific Qualification Using Knowledge Based Test Methodology.”

●      2002, Established electronics prognostics and health monitoring program at CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center. Developed prognostics and physics-of-failure techniques to prove (under 2 NASA contracts) that the electronics on a NASA space shuttle robot arm and on NASA booster rockets can survive additional missions after the completion of the 2001 designed-for life. This was used to certify future missions.

●      2002, Chairman for IEEE Reliability Prediction Assessment Guidebook #1413.1 (1999–2002).

●      2001, Established $4M lead-free electronics research program at CALCE. This was the only research program to assess the long-term (6 years +) reliability of lead-free devices and products.

●      1999, Established CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center as the first academic research facility in the world to be ISO 9001 certified.

●      1999, Developed Pecht’s Law, which provides an estimate of semiconductor device reliability trends and the requirements for accelerated testing.

●      1998, As IEEE chairperson, led the development of both the IEEE #1332 Reliability Program Standard, and IEEE #1413 Standard Methodology for Reliability Prediction and Assessment for Electronic Systems and Equipment. Received IEEE Standards Award in 2000.

●      1997, Developed the concept of “up-rating”, which is the process to assess the capability of semiconductor devices to meet functionality and performance requirements outside the manufacturers’ specification. The up-rating approach was institutionalized into IEC/PAS 62240: Use of Semiconductor Devices Outside Manufacturers’ Specified Temperature Ranges, Edition 1, 2001; as well as GEIA 4900, 2001, and is currently used for all commercial avionics systems.

●      1996, Led program to develop production-quality design and reliability assessment methods and software used by Texas Instruments, Westinghouse, AlliedSignal, Lockheed, and Rockwell International.

●      1995, Won $4.8M in NSF contracts to enhance the research and educational programs in electronic products and systems development.

●      1995, Modeled IC endurance and assessed the risks of replacing ceramic IC packages with plastic packages for avionics and military applications. The studies (and book “Plastic Encapsulated Microcircuits” John Wiley Publishing), were fundamental to the use of plastic encapsulated microcircuits for the Boeing 777 and for the general use of commercial parts in military and aerospace applications.

●      1995, Formalized the concept of the physics-of-failure of electronic components, a methodology which includes modeling root-cause failure mechanisms and the impact of defects and loads on product reliability.

●      1993, Designed and fabricated an opto-electronics semiconductor package for the automotive industry (with Dr. David Bigio).

●      1992–1994, Guided the U.S. DoD to reform the military reliability standards, which led to the “Perry Memo” on Standards Reform. Pecht’s work led to Army’s establishment of a Physics-of-Failure Branch and their use of software generated by CALCE for military systems. Similarly, GM transitioned from military reliability standards and now requires the use of CALCE reliability software in their vehicles under GM specification GM-3172.

●      1992, Conducted physics-of-failure methodology for the reliability assessment of electronics in NASA’s Zeno Space Shuttle Experiment. Demonstrated the applicability of the physics-of-failure approach in the design and assessment of the Zeno Program, as a replacement for Mil-Hdbk-217 and progeny.

●      1991, Developed techniques to monitor quality and logistics parameters and to aid in decision support during the design of electronic assemblies, under DARPA’s Initiative in Concurrent Engineering (DICE). These techniques were incorporated into Texas Instruments’ (Raytheon) CARMA software and commercially marketed.

●      1990, Conducted experimental study of AWACs cooling to determine the temperature profiles of AWACs convectively cooled electronic equipment and developed models for reliability design and assessment.

●      1988–1990, Developed microelectronic packaging design guidelines for the U.S. Air Force. This was the first document of its kind to incorporate physics-of-failure in design (DfR). These guidelines were extended to incorporate commercial and industrial microelectronic packaging trade-offs.

●      1987–1989, Developed reliability models for very high speed integrated circuit (VHSIC) devices and semiconductor packages for the U. S. Air Force. 

●      1986–1988, Developed methodologies and computational techniques for derating and preferred parts selection for the U.S. Integrated Electronics Warfare Systems (INEWS) program.

●      1984–1986, Developed the first Reliability and Maintainability Computer Aided Design (RAMCAD) software. Lead to the development of RAMCAD software by more than ten commercial companies.