John Choma, Jr.

John Choma, Jr., 72, born on November 6, 1941, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, passed away August 10, 2014. He resided in San Dimas, California at the time of his passing. Arrangements are under the direction of Forest Lawn, Covina, California.
We are greatly sadden to have lost one of our long time members and 1997 CAS president, Dr. John Choma. He passed away in the morning of August 10th, 2014 recovering from a short illness. Dr. Choma was a Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Southern California, where he also served as chair of the Electrophysics. Prior to joining the USC faculty in 1980, Prof. Choma was a senior staff design engineer in the TRW Microelectronics Center in Redondo Beach, California (now Northrop-Grumman). His earlier positions include technical staff at Hewlett-Packard Company in Santa Clara, California, Senior Lecturer in the Graduate Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering of the California Institute of Technology, electrical engineering lectureships at the University of Santa Clara and the University of California at Los Angeles, and a faculty appointment at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was an expert in the analysis, modeling, and design of high performance analog and mixed signal integrated circuits and an outstanding teacher.
Dr. Choma earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1963, 1965, and 1969 respectively. In his career, Professor Choma authored close to 200 publications and presented more than 65 invited short courses, seminars and tutorials. He is the author of a 1985 Wiley Interscience text on electrical network theory, the co-author of a 2007 World Scientific Press text on feedback networks, and the author of a forthcoming Cambridge University Press undergraduate level text on integrated circuit analysis and design. Prof. Choma has contributed several chapters to five edited electronic circuit texts, and he was an area editor of the IEEE/CRC Press Handbook of Circuits and Filters.
Professor Choma was widely recognized for his technical contributions. A Fellow of the IEEE, Prof. Choma has been awarded the IEEE Millennium medal and has received three awards from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society; namely, the Golden Jubilee Award, the 1999 Education Award, and the 2000 Meritorious Service Award. He is also the recipient of several local and national teaching awards and has served as a "Distinguished Lecturer" in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. In 2010, the Swanson School of Engineering of the University of Pittsburgh named Prof. Choma their "Distinguished Alumnus" for their Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Prof. Choma joined the USC faculty in 1980 and was promoted to Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1991. He was well known for his outstanding teaching. He won the school's teaching award in 1984. He was also recognized by other organizations on campus with the Tau Beta Pi teaching award in 1983, the Mortar Board teaching award in 1984, and the Etha Kappa Nu teaching award in 1987. Professor Choma was a teaching fellow at the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching in 1991 and was named Outstanding Professor in 1998 and 1999 by the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Prof. Choma has supervised over 40 PhD students of which: two students are (or have been) corporate CEOs, three who are either CTOs or corporate VPs, three academic deans, and at least seven others who are at various tenure stream ranks in academe.
In addition to the Ph.D. students, whom Prof. Choma directly supervised, he has been without a doubt the most popular teacher among EE professors at USC. "He was a great person as colleague (plus he was nominator for my IEEE Fellow case, and for many others as well). He loved to help students, help sending out resumes of students for summer interns, for regular jobs, etc." a former colleague of him wrote.

Prof. Choma was a long time member of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society serving it as a member of IEEE CAS Board of Governors, Vice President for Administration 1995, and its President in 1997. He also served as the International Chair of the IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Awards Committee. He was an Associate Editor and Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part II, Associate Editor of the Journal of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing and a former Regional Editor of the Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers.
His latest service to IEEE CAS was the Education Award committee. I remember vividly my latest phone conversation with him, his energy and youthfulness that he projected. I asked him jokingly: "when are you going to retire?" and his answer was his father taught him that "if it works, do not try to fix it." Unfortunately all of it came to a sudden stop. We will all miss him enormously as his presence and the legacy he left will be felt for a long time.

Prof. Choma is survived by his wife of 38 years, Lorraine. Prof. Choma was the beloved stepgrandfather to Allyson, Nicholas, Taylor, Stephanie, Jonathan and Shelby.

The funeral services will be held on:

Friday, August 22, 2014 at 10:00 AM
St. Louise de Marillac Catholic Church
1700 E. Covina Blvd.
Covina, CA 91724
(626)915-7873

The family would like to request that in lieu of flowers a contribution be made to the school in his name. The school will add the contribution to a scholarship fund to be set up in Prof. Choma's name.