Takao Nishitani: An Outstanding Researcher, Technical Leader, and Mentor

I was most pleased to hear that Dr. Takao Nishitani was selected to receive the 2017 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits. Sometimes very deserving candidates are not nominated and never receive the awards they truly deserve. Typically these individuals are too humble to expect these awards; Dr. Nishitani is indeed one such individual. I thank Wanda Gass for finding the original architects of the programmable digital signal processor (DSP) at NEC and Bell Labs and Rajeev Jain for nominating them. Dr. Nishitani's work on programmable signal processing ICs at NEC C&C Research Laboratory over many decades is simply exemplary.