Alice C. Parker

Dr. Alice Cline Parker, an alumna of NC State, obtained both a BSEE in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1975. She has been a professor since then, serving first in EE at Carnegie Mellon University for 5 years then in EE at the University of Southern California for the past 37 years. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, a teaching award winner in the Viterbi School of Engineering, and a service-award winner given by the South Central Scholars for her volunteer work guiding underrepresented students.

Dr. Parker has been an active researcher first in design automation and presently in neuromorphic circuits. She is one of the founders of the High-Level (Behavioral) Synthesis Field. She is the author of over 180 peer-reviewed publications, and has graduated over 30 Ph.D. students. She has received funding from the Army Research Office, DARPA, NSF, several DoD organizations, IBM, and SRC and has been a consultant to many organizations.

Her more recent accomplishments include the first synapse (part of an electronic neuron) constructed with carbon nanotube transistors, the first analog circuit designs of astrocytes (a cell found in the brain) interacting with circuits modeling neurons, noisy and chaotic analog neural circuits, and a neural network that teaches itself Sudoku-like games with only reward signals to neurons that provide correct guesses.

She attributes her success to her father’s mentoring and early mentoring by Prof. Wayland P. Seagraves in the NC State EE Department.