A. Richard Newton received the B. Eng. and M.Eng.Sci degrees from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1973 and 1975 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978. He is currently Dean of the College of Engineering and the Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1979 he has been actively involved as a researcher and teacher in the areas of design technology, electronic system architecture, and integrated circuit design. He was the founding director of the MARCO/DARPA Gigascale Silicon Research Center from 1998-2002.

Dr. Newton was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design for Integrated Circuits from 1984-1988 and a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society 1985-1988. He was Technical Program Chair of the 1988 and 1989 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conferences, Vice Chair of the 1990 Conference and was General Chair of the Conference in 1991.

He has received a number of awards for his teaching and research, including Best Paper Awards at the 1987 and 1989 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conferences, and the International Conference on Computer Design, and he was selected in 1987 as the national recipient of the C. Holmes McDonald Outstanding Young Professor Award of the Eta-Kappa-Nu Engineering Honor Society. In 1989 he was co-recipient of a Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions for Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems. In 2003 he was also awarded a Doctorate of Laws, honoris causa, from his alma mater the University of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Newton is also an Honorary Professor in Integrated Circuit Design at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan and was awarded the 2003 EDAC Phil Kaufman Award.

Professor Newton serves on the Board of Trustees for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. He is a Member of the ACM, Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.