Richard Stacy Withers

 

Date of passing: Feb. 2022.

 

Accomplishments:

 

At Conductus, Bruker and Varian he pioneered high sensitivity detectors based on superconducting thin films for NMR chemical analysis. He led groups that received two R&D 100 awards.

 

Most recently he developed capacitive touch sensors for Maxim and Qualcomm.

 

At MIT Lincoln Laboratory he developed analog nonvolatile MNOS/CCD memory. Invented and demonstrated nonvolatile analog floating-gate memory. Designed and built microwave stripline tapped-delay-line transversal filters. Co-led group developing CDMA spread-spectrum radios using surface-acoustic-wave convolvers.

 

Over his career he had 23 issued patents.

 

IEEE Fellow since 2009.

 

 

Rich was an avid bicyclist and homebrewer, a loving father to his three children, and a beloved friend to his colleagues.