U of M Professor Keshab Parhi to be inducted into the National Academy of Inventors

University of Minnesota Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Keshab K. Parhi has been named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow and will be inducted into the NAI at the academy’s annual meeting in June. 

Election to NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

Parhi, who holds 31 U.S. patents, is a world-renowned and field-shaping engineer and scientist who is known best for his pioneering research in the broad field of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) design of digital signal processing, image processing, and communications systems. His research is used in many integrated circuit chips for broadband communications systems that form the backbone of the Internet. He is the author of more than 600 research papers.

His inventions on various error control coder architectures for turbo and low-density parity check codes have been used in wireless systems. His research on polar code decoders and fast Fourier transform (FFT) are  used in smart phones (deployed by his former Ph.D. students in their company). Parhi’s work on pipelined architectures for the advanced encryption standard (AES) standard enables millions of secure transactions per second. 

Parhi’s research and inventions have led to a faster and secure Internet with lower latency and lower energy consumption. Anyone who uses the modern Internet directly benefits from Parhi’s research.

“About 25 years ago, Dr. Cliff Lau, my then program director at the Office of Naval Research, mentioned to me that, in addition to writing papers, I should think about patenting some of my work—that was excellent advice,” Parhi said. “I am pleased that the National Academy of Inventors has elected me as a Fellow in recognition of my efforts in patenting and training Ph.D. students in patenting.”

Parhi’s research has been licensed to Infineon and the Semiconductor Research Corporation. He took a leave to work at Broadcom from 2000 to 2002 and his research at Broadcom led to nine patents. These inventions were incorporated into numerous networking products for copper and optical cables at Broadcom. 

Parhi and his former students have also patented numerous ideas on behalf of Leanics, a small company he founded that was active from 2005 to 2012. Several of his former Ph.D. students who were co-inventors of the patents are now cofounders and CTOs of their own startups. 

Parhi joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 1988. He is currently the Edgar F. Johnson Professor of Electronic Communication and is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor.

The 2020 NAI Fellows will be inducted into NAI at the academy’s 10th Anniversary Annual Meeting event in Tampa, Florida, June 7-9, 2021.

For more information and a complete list of 2020 NAI Fellows, visit the NAI website.