Tiwei Wei, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Electronics Packaging Society (EPS) Exceptional Technical Achievement Award. He is being recognized for his pioneering contributions to thermal management technologies for 2.5D and 3D system integration, including advances in multiphysics modeling, electronic cooling, and thermal packaging materials.
The IEEE Electronics Packaging Society is the world’s leading professional organization dedicated to advancing the science and engineering of electronics packaging and manufacturing. Through conferences, publications, educational programs, and international collaborations, the Society promotes innovation and knowledge exchange across the electronics packaging community.
The IEEE EPS Exceptional Technical Achievement Award is among the Society’s highest technical honors. It recognizes individuals whose contributions are considered truly exceptional and beyond those achieved by most members of the profession. Recipients are honored for significant inventions, groundbreaking technologies, major product innovations, or transformative research that advances the state of the art in electronics packaging. Award-winning contributions must be documented through impactful publications, patents, books, or other publicly available technical works.
Before joining UCLA in 2025, Wei served as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University and previously conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University’s NanoHeat Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics and Energy Conversion in KU Leuven, with additional training in advanced 3D system integration through collaborations with imec in Belgium.
Wei’s research focuses on advanced semiconductor packaging manufacturing, heterogeneous integration, and thermal management technologies for next-generation computing systems.
His recent honors include the 2025 Samsung Global Research Outreach (GRO) Programme Award, the 2025 ASME Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division Early Career Engineer Award, the 2025 IEEE EPS Regional Contributions Award, the 2024 Intel Rising Star Faculty Award, and the 2020 imec Ph.D. Excellence Award.
In addition to his research accomplishments, Wei serves as Associate Editor for Microelectronics Reliability, IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (T-CPMT), and the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging. He has also held numerous leadership roles within the IEEE EPS community, including General Chair of the 2024 and 2026 IEEE EPS Reliability for Electronics and Photonics Packaging (REPP) Symposium, Chair of the IEEE EPS Technical Committee on Reliability, and Assistant Chair of the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) Interconnections Committee.