William W. Simmons (born 1932) is an American physicist at TRW and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), notable for his development of electro-optical devices. [1]
Simmons received his BA in Physics in 1953 from Carleton College and his MA in 1955 in Physics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where in 1960 he also received his PhD in Physics. [1]
After graduation he started at Space Technology Labs in the research and development of lasers and other electro-optic devices. Between 1968 and 1971 he returned to the Department of Engineering and Applied Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working as Associate Professor of electrical engineering. In 1972 he moved on to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he was project engineer in their new Laser Program. From 1985 till his retirement in 1992 he returned to TRW where he directed the research on "Solid State Lasers and Nonlinear Optics, Superconductive Electronics, and Semiconductor Diode Laser Devices and Arrays research groups." [1]
Simmons was awarded the Distinguished Teaching in Engineering Award in 1972 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was awarded distinguished alumni in 2009 for his "outstanding original research contributions to the development of electro-optical devices, including pulsed ion lasers, very large laser systems, and semiconductor laser arrays, and for his leadership in furthering the national goal of fusion energy generation." [1] In 1987 Simmons was awarded the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal for his "establishment and application of fundamental system design principles to the practical design and construction of very large solid-state laser facilities." [2]
John Bardeen was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor; and again in 1972 with Leon N. Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity known as the BCS theory.
Nick Holonyak Jr. was an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention and first demonstration of a semiconductor laser diode that emitted visible light. This device was the forerunner of the first generation of commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs). He was then working at a General Electric research laboratory near Syracuse, New York. He left General Electric in 1963 and returned to his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he later became John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics.
Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
Thomas Eugene Everhart FREng is an American educator and physicist. His area of expertise is the physics of electron beams. Together with Richard F. M. Thornley he designed the Everhart–Thornley detector. These detectors are still in use in scanning electron microscopes, even though the first such detector was made available as early as 1956.
Federico Capasso is an applied physicist and is one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University.
Milton Feng co-created the first transistor laser, working with Nick Holonyak in 2004. The paper discussing their work was voted in 2006 as one of the five most important papers published by the American Institute of Physics since its founding 75 years ago. In addition to the invention of transistor laser, he is also well known for inventions of other "major breakthrough" devices, including the world's fastest transistor and light-emitting transistor (LET). As of May, 2009 he is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and holds the Nick Holonyak Jr. Endowed Chair Professorship.
Chih-Tang "Tom" Sah is a Chinese-American electronics engineer and condensed matter physicist. He is best known for inventing CMOS logic with Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. CMOS is used in nearly all modern very large-scale integration (VLSI) semiconductor devices.
Charles H. Henry was an American physicist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received an M.S. degree in physics in 1959 from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1965 from the University of Illinois, under the direction of Charlie Slichter. In March 2008, he was featured in an article in the Physics Illinois News, a publication of the Physics Department of the University of Illinois.
A quantum-well laser is a laser diode in which the active region of the device is so narrow that quantum confinement occurs. Laser diodes are formed in compound semiconductor materials that are able to emit light efficiently. The wavelength of the light emitted by a quantum-well laser is determined by the width of the active region rather than just the bandgap of the materials from which it is constructed. This means that much shorter wavelengths can be obtained from quantum-well lasers than from conventional laser diodes using a particular semiconductor material. The efficiency of a quantum-well laser is also greater than a conventional laser diode due to the stepwise form of its density of states function.
Russell Dean Dupuis is an American electrical engineer and physicist.
Robert Louis Byer is a physicist. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1994 and of the American Physical Society in 2012.
Ann Catrina Coleman FIEEE FOSA is a Scottish electrical engineer and professor at the University of Texas at Dallas specialising in semiconductor lasers.
M. George Craford is an American electrical engineer known for his work in Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).
Sorab (Soli) K. Ghandhi was a professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) known for his pioneering work in electrical engineering and microelectronics education, and in the research and development of Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (OMVPE) for compound semiconductors. He was the recipient of the IEEE Education Award "For pioneering contributions to semiconductor and microelectronics education" in 2010.
Shun Lien Chuang was a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer, optical engineer, and physicist. He was a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, APS and JSPS, and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
John Michael Dallesasse is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where his research is focused on silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs), nanophotonics, semiconductor lasers / transistor lasers and photonics-electronics integration. He has over 60 publications and presentations, and holds 29 issued patents.
Karl Hess is the Swanlund Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC). He helped to establish the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at UIUC.
James J. Coleman is an electrical engineer who worked at Bell Labs, Rockwell International, and the University of Illinois, Urbana. He is best known for his work on semiconductor lasers, materials and devices including strained-layer indium gallium arsenide lasers and selective area epitaxy. Coleman is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Aristos Christou is an American engineer and scientist, academic professor and researcher. He is a Professor of Materials Science, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Reliability Engineering at the University of Maryland.
Xiuling Li is a distinguished electrical and computer engineering professor in the field of nanostructured semiconductor devices. She is currently the Temple Foundation Endowed Professorship No. 3 in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Fellow of the Dow Professor in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was a Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Director of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.