J. David Irwin is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 engineering

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 educator and author of popular textbooks in electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 and related areas. He is the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Head at Auburn University

Auburn University

Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...

. Irwin is one of the longest serving Department Heads of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the world, having been appointed to lead the (then Electrical Engineering) Department at Auburn in 1973. He had also served as President of the ECE honor society Eta Kappa Nu

Eta Kappa Nu

Eta Kappa Nu is the electrical and computer engineering honor society of the IEEE, founded in October 1904 by Maurice L. Carr at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The organization currently has around 200 student chapters and about 3,000,000 members and is headquartered in Chicago,...

; President of the US National Electrical Engineering Department Head Association; and President of two IEEE technical societies, on Industrial Electronics and on Education.

Biography

Irwin received a B.E.E. degree from Auburn University

Auburn University

Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...

 (1961), and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1962 and 1967, respectively. He joined Auburn University in 1969 as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Currently he is the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and ECE Department Head at Auburn.

He is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) “for contributing to industrial electronics, control instrumentation, and engineering education,” and Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education

American Society for Engineering Education

The American Society for Engineering Education is a non-profit member association, founded in 1893, dedicated to promoting and improving engineering and engineering technology education....

 (ASEE). Among his notable awards is the IEEE’s Richard M. Emberson Award (2000) “for a long and distinguished record of service to the IEEE in the educational, technical and publication areas.”

Authorship

Irwin is widely known in the ECE and engineering education communities for his undergraduate university-level textbook

Textbook

A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...

s in electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 and related areas.

Of special significance are his books Electric Circuit Analysis and Introduction to Electrical Engineering, which are being used in hundreds of colleges of engineering worldwide. He has also written on multimedia

Multimedia

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...

 computer communications, digital logic circuits, microcontrollers, industrial electronics

Electronics

Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

, industrial vibration and control

Control engineering

Control engineering or Control systems engineering is the engineering discipline that applies control theory to design systems with predictable behaviors...

, and learning and career planning for undergraduate engineering students.

Table 1: Selected textbooks by Irwin

Title	Co-authors	Publisher	Year
Basic Engineering Circuit Analysis	Mark Nelms	John Wiley and Sons	2008
Essentials of Electrical and Computer Engineering	David V. Kerns, Jr.	Prentice Hall	2004
Embedded Microcontroller Interfacing for M-CORE Systems	G. Jack Lipovski	Academic Press	2000
Introduction to Electrical Engineering	David V. Kerns, Jr.	Prentice Hall	1995
Digital Logic Circuit Analysis and Design	Victor P. Nelson, Troy H. Nagel	Prentice Hall	1995

Leadership

During his long career, Irwin served in leadership positions in several major engineering and engineering education professional associations. Table 2 provides a list of key positions.

Table 2: Key leadership positions

Title	Organization	Year
Chair	National Electrical Engineering Department Heads Association	1980–1981
President	IEEE Industrial Electronics Society IEEE Industrial Electronics Society -Vision Statement:The Industrial Electronics Society through its members encompasses a diverse range of technical activities devoted to the application of electronics and electrical sciences for the enhancement of industrial and manufacturing processes...	1980–1981
Member	IEEE Educational Activities Board	1981,1989
President	IEEE Education Society IEEE Education Society The IEEE Education Society is a society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , focused on the theory and practice of education and educational technology needed to deliver effectively domain knowledge in the fields of interest of IEEE.- History :The IEEE Education Society was...	1989–1990
President	Eta Kappa Nu Eta Kappa Nu Eta Kappa Nu is the electrical and computer engineering honor society of the IEEE, founded in October 1904 by Maurice L. Carr at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The organization currently has around 200 student chapters and about 3,000,000 members and is headquartered in Chicago,...	2007–2008

Entrepreneurship

Irwin was associated with several start-up companies, including Aunigma Network Solutions. Aunigma is an IT company based in Atlanta, Georgia US, addressing new generation Internet Protocol (IP) connections. Aunigma’s products are based on intellectual property (IP) created by the ECE Department at Auburn University.