Calendar

1002 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (Grainger Auditorium)

free and open to the public

ECE Illinois

In honor of his 90th birthday, please join us to celebrate the legacy of Professor Nick Holonyak, Jr. (BSEE '50, MS '51, PhD '54), John Bardeen Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics. A number of former students of Holonyak’s will deliver a series of talks exploring the impact of his numerous innovations.

An Illinois alumnus, Holonyak joined his alma mater as a faculty member in 1963 at the invitation of his doctoral adviser John Bardeen, the two-time Nobel Physics laureate and inventor of the transistor. During the next four decades, Holonyak and his students introduced several major optics-related inventions to the world. Holonyak’s best known invention is the world’s first practical LED he created while at General Electric in 1962. His GaAsP visible red LED proved that III-V alloys were viable, important materials for making devices. Today, all high-brightness LEDs, heterojunctions, quantum wells, and lasers are made from III-V alloy materials.

Holonyak continued his prolific research at Illinois, leading to many outstanding accomplishments such as the demonstration of the first quantum-well laser in 1970. Today, quantum-wells are a part of all high-performance LEDs and lasers. In the 1980s, he introduced impurity-induced layer disordering. Throughout the 1990’s, Holonyak created a process for forming high-quality oxide layers in and on aluminum-bearing III-V compound semiconductors, which has made vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers practical in many applications. By 2004, Holonyak and ECE ILLINOIS Professor Milton Feng invented the world’s first transistor laser, a three-terminal device that offers the potential for much faster broadband communications. Holonyak currently holds 41 patents.

Location: 1002 Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (Grainger Auditorium)

Schedule of events:

9 to 9:30 am
Introductory remarks

• Tamer Basar, Interim Dean, Swanlund Endowed Chair and CAS Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Rashid Bashir, Incoming Dean Designate, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and former Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory Director
• Wen-mei Hwu, AMD Jerry Sanders Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Acting Department Head, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Brian Cunningham, Director, MNTL and Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering

9:30 to 10 am
Dr. George Craford, CTO, Lumileds LLC
Title: From Nick’s LED to Illumination, Display, Automotive and Emerging Applications  

10 to 10:30 am
Prof. Russell D. Dupuis (BSEE ‘70, MS ‘71, PhD ‘73), Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-0ptics at Georgia Tech, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar
Title: Illuminating the World: MOCVD of III-V Quantum-Well LEDs and Lasers  

10:30 to 11 am
Prof. Dennis Deppe (BSEE ‘82, MS ‘85, PhD ‘89), FPCE Endowed Chair & Professor of Optics & Photonics at UCF
Title: From Nick’s Oxide to VCSELs for Optical Links & 3D Sensors   

11 to 11:30 am
Dr. Fred Kish (BSEE ‘88, MS ‘89, PhD ‘92), Senior Vice President, Optical Integrated Circuit Group at Infinera
Title: Connecting the World: From Nick’s Lab to Terabit/s Photonics ICs  

11:30 to noon
Dr. Don Scifres (MS ’70, PhD ’72), Managing Director, SDL Ventures, LLC and Chairman, SDL Capital, LP
Title: From Nick’s Lab to Wall Street

Free and open to the public.