Professor Van P. Carey and Amip Shah received the ASME Journal of Electronics Packaging Best Paper of the Year Award for 2006 for their paper, entitled “The Exergy Cost of Information Processing - A Comparison of Computer-Based Technologies and Biological Systems.” 

Their paper, published in December of 2006, explores the energy efficiency of microprocessors and workstation computers, and compares their performance to the energy efficiency of information processing in brains of mammals.  Their study indicates that although the rate of information processing per Watt of power input in solid state electronics is improving, it is several orders of magnitude lower than that in the human brain.