Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Sufi Zafar
IBM TJ Watson Research Center

Citation:

"For contributions to semiconductor device-based biosensors with applications in biology, healthcare and Internet of Things (IoT)."

Background:

Sufi Zafar works as a Research Staff Member at IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. She is a physicist with extensive interdisciplinary research experience in biosensors, device and material physics, data modelling and nanofabrication. She has had a long-standing interest in applying her expertise in physics and engineering to develop innovative biosensors for applications in healthcare, agriculture and environment. Towards this goal, she taught herself biology to be an effective collaborator and initiated and led a full-time project on biosensors at IBM Research. Her approach is to exploit CMOS technology tools to achieve sensor innovations with a viable path for commercialization. The biosensor project achieved significant translational success with technology transfer for commercialization rights to a medical diagnostic company. Additionally, Sufi’s research efforts have resulted in 79 top-tiered journal publications with h-index of 41 (including 25 first and corresponding authored ones with the mean citation of 112), 84 filed/pending patents, invited talks (including keynotes) and invitations to serve on technical conference committees. She has received prestigious internal and external awards and honors, including IBM Research Division Award (2005), IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards (2013, 2018), IBM Master Inventor Award (2017), IBM Outstanding Innovation Award ( 2021) Senior IEEE Member (2014) and American Physical Society Fellow (2009).