Dr. Tony Chan Carusone has taught and researched integrated circuits and systems for high-speed connectivity in industry and academia for over 20 years. He has fostered both small companies and some of the largest tech companies in the world, in all cases focusing on their growth in Canada. Through his work in both industry and academia, Dr. Chan Carusone has been central to making Canada a powerhouse of integrated circuit design for high-speed digital communication.
Tony arrived at the University of Toronto as an engineering undergraduate in 1997 at the tender age of seventeen and never left. During his Ph.D. program, he was one of the initial employees at Snowbush Microelectronics, a startup that developed a new business model: IP licensing. At the time, many companies found themselves needing complex analog circuits to communicate information at high speeds. Snowbush designed those circuits and licensed them as a building block for other companies to incorporate into their designs. This high-end IP licensing business is now a $1.5 billion (USD) market, forecast to grow to $2.5 billion (USD) by 2027. Today, several companies across the Greater Toronto Area dominate this market, led by Dr. Chan Carusone’s former Snowbush colleagues and his students.
Prof. Chan Carusone joined the faculty at the University of Toronto before even formally receiving his Ph.D. in 2001. As an academic, he is internationally recognized for his research, and has trained industry leaders throughout the Canadian semiconductor industry. He has received eleven best-paper awards at leading conferences for work on chip-to-chip and optical communication circuits, analog-to-digital conversion, and precise clock generation. He co-authored the latest editions of the classic textbooks “Analog Integrated Circuit Design” and “Microelectronic Circuits,” the best-selling engineering textbook ever. He was named a Fellow of the IEEE for “contributions to integrated circuits for digital communication.”
Tony also worked and consulted with several semiconductor companies in Canada over the past 20 years, most recently as the Chief Technology Officer of Alphawave Semi since 2022. Founded in 2017, Alphawave Semi rapidly established itself as a global leader in high-speed connectivity for the world’s technology infrastructure and had a $4 billion (USD) IPO just 4 years after its founding. Tony simultaneously helped build Canada’s Semiconductor Council, an important voice for industry, serving as a founding board member at a time when the critical role of semiconductors was rising to public attention.
Tony Chan Carusone’s YouTube channel
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tony-chan-carusone-2799a38
Prof. Chan Carusone’s research page