School of Science and IAS Nobel Prize Popular Science Lecture

Lighting in the 21st Century - From Blue LED to White

About the speakers

Prof. Evelyn Hu worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1975 to 1984, after receiving her PhD in Physics from Columbia University. She was Professor in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1984-2008. She served as the scientific co-director of the California NanoSystems Institute, a joint initiative at UCSB and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She was awarded a Doctor of Engineering honoris causa from HKUST in 2013. She is also Visiting Professor of the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study and Electronic and Computer Engineering, HKUST.

Prof. Hu’s research focuses on high-resolution fabrication of compound semiconductor electronic and optoelectronic devices, candidate structures for the realization of quantum computation schemes, and on novel device structures formed through the heterogeneous integration of materials. She has also developed biological approaches to the formation of electronic and photonic materials.

Prof. Hu is a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica of Taiwan, and the JASON Project. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has been a recipient of an NSF Distinguished Teaching Fellow award and an AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award, and holds an honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the University of Glasgow.

 

Prof. Kei May Lau received the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Rice University in 1981. From 1980 to 1982, she was a Senior Engineer at M/A-COM Gallium Arsenide Products, Inc., where she worked on epitaxial growth of GaAs for microwave devices, development of high-efficiency and mm-wave IMPATT diodes, and multi-wafer epitaxy by the chloride transport process. In the fall of 1982, she joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, where she became a full Professor in 1993. She initiated metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), compound semiconductor materials and devices programs at UMass. Her research group performed studies on heterostructures, quantum wells, strained-layers, III-V selective epitaxy, as well as high-frequency and photonic devices. Prof Lau spent her first sabbatical leave in 1989 at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. She developed acoustic sensors at the DuPont Central Research and Development Laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware during her second sabbatical leave ('95-'96). In the fall of 1998, she was a Visiting Professor at HKUST, where she joined the regular faculty since the summer of 2000. She established the Photonics Technology Center for R&D efforts in wide-gap semiconductor materials and devices. She became a Chair Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at HKUST in July 2005. She is also Senior Fellow of the HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study.

Prof. Lau is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Awards for Women (FAW) Scientists and Engineers. She served on the IEEE Electron Devices Society Administrative Committee and was an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices (1996-2002). She also served on the Electronic Materials Committee of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) of the American Institute of Materials Engineers.

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