David Wentzloff receives U-M Faculty Recognition Award
Prof. David Wentzloff received a 2024 University of Michigan Faculty Recognition Award for his outstanding achievements in scholarly research, excellence as a teacher, advisor and mentor, and distinguished service to the institution and profession.
Wentzloff is an internationally recognized leader in wireless integrated circuits. He directs the Wireless Integrated Circuits and Systems (WICS) group, which focuses on low-power integrated circuits for wireless communication in energy-constrained and volume-constrained applications. His research has led to reduced power consumption of wireless communication in IoT devices, including wearables, implantables, industrial monitors, and cellular IoT devices. His contributions have impacted wireless standards including Bluetooth, WiFi, and 5G/6G, paving the way for a new era of ultra-low power wireless devices.
A serial entrepreneur, Wentzloff has already co-founded three companies. He co-founded his first company, Everactive, in 2012 with Ben Calhoun and Brendan Richardson; Calhoun and Wentzloff met as doctoral students at MIT. He currently serves as Co-CTO of the company with Calhoun. Everactive has created the industry’s first and only integrated, full-stack batteryless sensing platform including physical sensor, data capture and processing, wireless communication, analytics and reporting software. Everactive’s first two commercial products provide Steam Trap Monitoring (STM) and Machine Health Monitoring (MHM) for industrial customers, and are powered entirely by light or heat.
Wentzloff founded his second company, Movellus, with former students Mo Faisal (President and CEO) and Jeff Fredenburg in 2013. Movellus solves system-level challenges for large SoCs that have aggressive power and performance targets. Movellus technology has been integrated into multiple high-performance processors and accelerators that are commercially available today. Wentzloff currently serves on its Board of Directors.
The most recent company is CubeWorks, founded in 2013 by a group of ECE faculty and students, including Wentzloff. CubeWorks brings to market a portfolio of ultra-low-power, ultra-small wireless smart sensors.
He has 28 U.S. patents to date, and more than 160 publications based on his research and inventions.
Wentzloff is a favorite teacher at Michigan, being named HKN Professor of the Year in 2010 and 2015. He also received the Joel and Ruth Spira Excellence in Teaching Award. He has taught a wide range of courses, including the 1st year course for all engineering students called Self-Driving Cars, Drones, and Beyond; the introductory circuits course for all EE and CE majors called Introduction to Electronic Circuits; the senior level major design experience course called Monolithic Amplifier Circuits; and the graduate courses Analog Integrated Circuits and Advanced Topics in Integrated Circuits.
Wentzloff has mentored a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students. He has graduated 21 doctoral students, and served as a mentor to dozens of master’s students and more than 30 undergraduate students. He often serves as a formal advisor to undergraduate and graduate students as well.
Combining his natural abilities as a teacher with his entrepreneurial activities, he served as Faculty Director for the Center for Entrepreneurship during the years 2014-2022. One of his key contributions was helping develop a new Certificate in Entrepreneurship.
Within the Department, he has served on the ECE Executive Committee, and currently serves as director of the Michigan Integrated Circuits Laboratory (MICL).
Wentzloff has received an NSF CAREER Award, and DARPA Young Faculty Award, and several best paper awards, most recently at the 2023 International Conference on Synthesis, Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Methods, and Applications to Circuit Design. He has served on the technical program committees for the major international conferences in his field.