The ECSE Department is heartbroken to report that Professor Mona Hella passed away on January 20, 2025. Her passing is a devastating loss to her family, and to ECSE and RPI. She will be dearly missed.
A commemorative event for Mona will be held on February 8, 1:30 pm, at the Chapel+Cultural Center, 2125 Burdett Ave., Troy, NY 12180. Please contact Gina Moore for information on including a tribute, contributing photos, and registering attendance.
Mona was brilliant, passionate, dedicated, and driven. She cared deeply about education and research and worked closely with our students until the very end. Mona was a key part of RPI’s Chips Initiative, leading a chips design thrust. She established strong collaborations with leading industries and brought state-of-the-art ideas and tools to her classroom and research. She cared deeply about mentoring students, especially women in STEM, and she was a role model for many. Mona’s passing leaves a great void in ECSE, Engineering, and RPI.
Mona received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University in 2001. She joined RPI as an Assistant Professor in 2004 after a short career in industry as a senior circuit designer in RF Micro-Devices, now Qorvo Inc., and Spirea-AB, Sweden. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011, and to Full Professor in 2018. Mona was a Fulbright scholar in 2015 and an IEEE senior member since 2016. During her academic career, spanning over 20 years at RPI, Mona focused on integrated circuits (IC) design, high frequency (RF/Microwave/mm-Wave/THz) systems, and power management ICs. Her research expanded down to device physics, characterization, and modeling, and up to applications in sensing, communications, biomedical technologies, and AI-infused hardware. She established collaborations not only with her ECSE colleagues but also with faculty from Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Nuclear Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science. These collaborations resulted in prototype developments using the clean rooms (@ RPI, Cornell, MIT Lincoln labs) as well as various foundry services (GlobalFoundries, TSMC, AMS, ST Micro, Jazz Semiconductors, Fraunhofer Institute, IMEC, etc.) in addition to publications, contracts, and grants. Mona has published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications in areas related to chip engineering, holds 5 issued patents, and has a number of patent applications.
Mona was an exceptional teacher and believed in experiential learning as well as strong integration between research and education. She built the analog and RF circuit curriculum in ECSE from the ground up and introduced the design contest component in her Analog IC Design course supported by Analog Device Inc. She was passionate about democratizing IC design and fabrication, bringing new approaches through collaboration with partners like Efabless, NYDesign, and NYCREATES. Mona effectively led the ECSE Maker Space, the Mercer Lab, during its formative years.
Mona cared deeply about her students. She graduated 14 PhD students, 8 master’s students, and mentored many undergraduate students with an interest in integrated circuits (IC) design. Her impact has been immense. Today, her mentees are playing leading roles in major semiconductor companies (Intel, GF), chip makers (Apple, Google, Analog Devices, Finisar, Broadcom, Skyworks, IBM), and industry R&D laboratories (Nokia-Bell Labs, GE-Research).