Bantval Jayant Baliga (born 28 April 1948 in Chennai) is an Indian electrical engineer best known for his work in power semiconductor devices, and particularly the invention of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). [1] [2]
In 1993, Baliga was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to power semiconductor devices leading to the advent of smart power technology.
Baliga grew up in Jalahalli, a small village near Bangalore, India. His father, Bantwal Vittal Manjunath Baliga, was one of India's first electrical engineers in the days before independence and founding President of the Indian branch of the Institute of Radio Engineers, which later became the IEEE in India. Baliga's father played pivotal roles in the founding of Indian television and electronics industries. [1] [3] During his childhood his father inspired him a lot. Baliga remembers reading IEEE proceeding during his highschool days which were brought by his father to home. He graduated from highschool in 1963. [4]
Jayant studied at Bishop Cotton Boys' School, Bangalore. He received his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1969, and his MS (1971) and PhD (1974) in Electrical Engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. [1]
He worked 15 years at the General Electric Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York, then joined North Carolina State University in 1988 as a Full Professor. He was promoted to Distinguished University Professor in 1997. His invention insulated gate bipolar transistor that combines sciences from two streams Electronics engineering and Electrical engineering. This has resulted in cost savings of over $15 trillion for consumers, and is forming a basis for smart grid. Baliga then worked in academic field. He also founded three companies that made products based on semiconductor technologies. [3] [5] [6]
No. | Title | Publisher | Year | ISBN |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Epitaxial Silicon Technology | Academic Press Inc | 1986 | 9780120771202 |
2 | Modern Power Devices | John Wiley & Sons | 1987 | 9780471819868 |
3 | Power Semiconductor Devices | Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc | 1995 | 9783030067656 |
4 | Silicon Carbide Power Devices | World Scientific Publishing Company | 2006 | 978-981-256-605-8 |
5 | Fundamentals of Power Semiconductor Devices | Springer | 2018 | 978-3319939872 |
6 | The IGBT Device: Physics, Design and Applications of the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor | Elsevier | 2022 | 978-0323999120 |
7 | Modern Silicon Carbide Power Devices | World Scientific Publishing Company | 2023 | 978-9811284274 |
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And it may not be too soon to identify a few new candidates for hero status—people such as the quantum-well wizard Federico Capasso of Lucent Technologies (which includes Bell Labs) and B. Jayant Baliga, the inventor of the IGBT, who describes his transistor in this issue