James D. Meindl was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1933. He attended Carnegie Mellon University and recieved his B.S., M.S. and PhD in Electrical Engineering 1955, 1956 and 1958 respectively. Following employment as an engineer at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, he entered military service in 1959and was assigned to the U.S. Army Electronics Laboratory. Later on he remained there as a civilian and eventually became the director of the Integrated Electronics Division in 1965. In 1967, he joined the faculty at Stanford University as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering. There he was named Director of the Stanford Electronics Laboratory in 1969, and Director of the Center for Integrated Systems in 1981. From 1984 to 1986 he was both Associate Dean for Research, School of Engineering, and John M. Fluke Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1986 Meindl was appointed vice president for academic affairs and provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Professor Meindl’s technical areas of specialization are integrated electronics, ultra large scale integration, micropower electronics, and medical electronics. He and his co-authors have been recipients of six outstanding paper awards at International Solid State Circuits Conferences and other symposia. He received the A.S. Fleming Award in 1967 as one of the 10 Outstanding Young Scientists in Government, and in 1980 the IEEE Electron Devices Society honored him with the J.J. Ebers Award, He was the founding editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits and has chaired numerous technical symposia and conferences.

Professor Meindl is a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Electrochemical Society, and numerous other professional and honor societies. He is the author of a book on micropower circuits, the holder of six patents, and author or coauthor of over 300 publications.