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Retired ECE Associate Professor Alfred P. DeFonzo Passes Away

September 26, 2024 Community

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The College of Engineering (CoE) is mourning the death of Associate Professor Alfred (Al) DeFonzo of the UMass Amherst Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department. He passed away over the Labor Day weekend. ECE Department Head Russell Tessier described DeFonzo as “our longtime friend and colleague,” who had served on the ECE faculty since 1983 and established a long and distinguished career in the CoE.

“I will remember Al as a friend who was highly engaging and intelligent,” said Tessier. “He will be missed.”

According to an obituary in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, “Dr. Alfred P. DeFonzo was a loving father, dedicated husband, and distinguished physicist and electrical engineer. He was born in Rhode Island on November 9th, 1946. He attended the University of Rhode Island and received his Bachelor Degree of Science in Physics. He entered Brown University and was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Physics.” See entire Gazette obit: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/gazettenet/name/alfred-defonzo-obituary?id=56343439.

In addition, the Gazette obit said DeFonzo studied at the Enrico Fermi Institute of Physics in Italy. He married his wife Adele in 1976, at which time they moved to Washington D.C., and he joined the Optical Division of the Naval Research Laboratory. There he established the federal government's first picosecond and optical techniques branch before joining the UMass Amherst ECE department. 

“He was a dedicated educator,” explained the Gazette, “and he inspired countless students during his tenure with UMass Amherst…His 1989-1990 sabbatical leave was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management….” 

Subsequently, at the beginning of the 21st century, DeFonzo played a critical role in developing the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) Engineering Research Center, and he was a co-author of the key journal article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that defined the CASA concept of dense radar networks. 

As CASA summarized that concept, “CASA is a multi-sector partnership among academia, industry, and government dedicated to engineering revolutionary, weather-sensing networks. These innovative networks will save lives and property by detecting the region of the lower atmosphere currently below conventional radar range – [thus] mapping storms, winds, rain, temperature, humidity, and the flow of airborne hazards.”

The Gazette obit also noted that “Dr. DeFonzo's patents and over fifty scientific publications stand as a testament to his intellectual curiosity and tireless pursuit of knowledge. His work has left an indelible mark on the field[s] of physics and electrical engineering. Al's legacy will continue to inspire future generations of scientists and engineers.”

According to Tessier, Defonzo also made numerous teaching contributions to the ECE department and the CoE. For example, “He created the still-popular Microelectronics Fabrication course (ECE 571) and helped establish the Semiconductor Instructional Processing Laboratory (SIPL) that is the backbone of the course.” 

The ECE 571 course that DeFonzo originated still uses sophisticated lectures and lab assignments to teach the principles and practice of modern, microelectronic, silicon-device processing, including photolithography, oxidation, diffusion, thin-film deposition, ion implantation, packaging, yield, and process integration. In the SIPL lab that DeFonzo helped to create, students learn hands-on, state-of-the-art, laboratory fabrication of working microelectronic devices and process-simulation techniques.

“Additionally,” said Tessier,  “Al was the first ECE faculty member to teach a course specifically on quantum computation. Al was particularly proud of his junior-level Software-Intensive Engineering course.” 

The Gazette obit concluded that DeFonzo “is survived by his beloved and supportive wife of 48 years, Adele DeFonzo, and devoted son, Derek DeFonzo.” (September 2024)

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