Engineering Alumni Hall of Distinction Award: 2017 Recipient
Jonathan Rose (EngSci 8T0, ECE MASc 8T2, PhD 8T6)
Professor Jonathan Rose has had a profound impact on both the academic research community and industry. He was instrumental in organizing a group of professors and graduate students at the University of Toronto to do research on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, which ultimately led to U of T being recognized as one of the foremost academic institutions in the world for research in this area. He co-founded Right Track CAD Corporation, as president and CEO, which had the goal to develop novel FPGA device architecture and the computer-aided design software needed to design systems based on these devices. Right Track’s business was to sell these innovations to existing vendors. In 2000, Right Track was acquired by Altera Corporation — one of two dominant providers of FPGAs — and became part of the Altera Toronto Technology Centre. Rose served as the senior director of Altera Toronto Technology Centre until 2003.