Gerald E. Sobelman received a B.S. in physics, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974. He was awarded M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Harvard University in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Subsequently, he became a Research Associate at The Rockefeller University, where he worked on computational problems in theoretical physics.
He joined Sperry Corporation in 1981 as a Senior Electrical Engineer, where he worked in the area of device modeling for circuit simulation. He was later appointed Manager of MOS Device Development, and directed the effort to design and optimize devices for scaled CMOS technologies.
In 1984, he joined the Advanced ECAD department of Control Data Corporation as a Senior Technical Consultant. He received the Technical Excellence award from CDC for his research on silicon compilation.
Since 1986, he has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. His current research interests are in the areas of circuit design for applications in communications, signal processing, coding and cryptography. He is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Program in Computer Engineering.