Vijay Narayanan

Dr. Narayanan received his B.Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering  from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (1995), and his M.S. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. After completing post-doctoral research at Arizona State University, Dr. Narayanan joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in 2001 to conduct research on High-k /Metal Gates

At IBM Research, he pioneered High-k /Metal Gate Research and Development from the early stages of materials discovery to full development and implementation in manufacturing. These High-k /Metal Gate materials form the basis of all IBM systems processors starting with the POWER7+™ server, and of most low-power chips for mobile devices such as smartphones/tablets from Samsung & Apple.

Dr. Narayanan led the team that was awarded the Extraordinary Accomplishment Award from IBM Research for productization of High-κ/Metal Gates in 2016 and in recognition of his fundamental contributions to High-ĸ/metal gate technology, Dr. Narayanan received an IBM Corporate Award in 2013. He was recognized as an IBM Master Inventor in 2007 and 2016 and was inducted into the IBM Academy of Technology in 2015. He is an IEEE Senior Member and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011, and was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT, Madras for the year 2025. He has been an active organizer of symposia at the Electrochemical Society (ECS) spring meeting and is currently the Symposia Co-Chair of the Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits.

Currently, Dr. Narayanan is an IBM Fellow, Strategist for Physics of AI and Senior Manager for PCM and AI Materials. He leads a worldwide IBM team developing Analog In-memory Compute Accelerators for AI applications and novel materials innovation elements for advanced CMOS Logic & Chiplets. He is an author or co-author of over 100 journal and conference papers, holds more than 300 patents, has given numerous talks and edited one book: “Thin Films On Silicon: Electronic And Photonic Applications”.

Current and Prior Positions

IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
IBM Fellow
4/2018 - Present

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Distinguished Research Staff Member
4/2016 - 4/2018

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Principal Research Staff Member 4/2014-4/2016

IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
Manager, Si Technology
7/2006 - Present