The Welker Award 2023 Recipient

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  Prof. Larry A. Coldren (University of California, Santa Barbara)

  For seminal contributions to tunable lasers, vertical cavity lasers, and photonic integrated circuits

  Biography

  Larry A. Coldren received the BS in Electrical Engineering and BA in Physics from Bucknell University, and joined Bell Laboratories in 1968. Under Bell Lab’s support he then attended Stanford University and received the MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1969 and 1972, respectively. Following 13 years in the research area with Bell Laboratories, he joined the ECE Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1984, and in 1986 was a founding member of the Materials Department. From 1991 into the 2000s he was Director of the DARPA/industry funded multi-campus Optoelectronics Technology Center. He became the Fred Kavli Chair Professor in 1999. From 2009 to 2011, he was interim Dean of the College of Engineering, and in 2017 he became the Kavli Prof. Emeritus and a Distinguished Research Professor. He has authored or coauthored over a thousand journal and conference papers, eight book chapters, a widely-used textbook, and 63 issued patents, which have received over 39,000 citations. He is a fellow of IEEE, OSA (Optica), IEE, and the National Academy of Inventors as well as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a recipient of the John Tyndall, Aaron Kressel, David Sarnoff, IPRM, and Nick Holonyak, Jr. Awards.
  In 1990, Dr. Coldren co-founded Optical Concepts, later acquired as Gore Photonics, to develop novel VCSEL technology, and, in 1998, he co-founded Agility Communications, later acquired by JDSU (now Lumentum), to develop widely-tunable integrated transmitters and transponders. At UCSB, he has led work on multiple-section widely-tunable lasers, efficient vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), and InP-based Photonic ICs. He continues to work in these areas.

IPRM Award 2023 Recipient

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  Prof. Kei May Lau (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

  For significant contributions to the development of InP hetero-epitaxy on Si by metal organic chemical vapor deposition for photonic and electronic devices

  Biography

  Kei May Lau is a Research Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was a Chair Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) until 2022. She received her degrees from the University of Minnesota and Rice University and served as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst before joining HKUST in 2000. Lau is a Fellow of the IEEE, Optica (formerly OSA), and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. She was also a recipient of the IET J J Thomson medal for Electronics, Optica Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, IEEE Photonics Society Aron Kressel Award, US National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Awards for Women (FAW) Scientists and Engineers, and Hong Kong Croucher Senior Research Fellowship. She was an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and Electron Device Letters, an Associate Editor for the Journal of Crystal Growth and Applied Physics Letters.
  Prof. Lau’s research work focuses on the development of monolithic integration of semiconductor devices and systems on industry-standard silicon substrates by MOCVD. She was an early explorer of this approach and has produced record-breaking results in this area. In 2008 her group was the first to demonstrate the highest mobility and millimeter-wave (fT > 200 GHz) III- V transistors lattice-matched to InP grown directly on Si. She also led the development of 1.5 µm room-temperature electrically pumped III-V quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on CMOS-standard (001) Si substrate. Recently, her group developed the lateral aspect ratio trapping (LART) technique to grow III-V active devices in the same plane as the Si layer enabling efficient coupling with Si waveguides on silicon-on-insulator (SOI). They demonstrated telecom InGaAs/InP quantum well lasers and high-performance photodetectors selectively grown on SOI by LART.

The Quantum Devices Award Recipient

• 
  Dr. Sarath D. Gunapala (NASA, USA)

  For contributions to the III-V quantum structure infrared detectors and focal plane arrays

  Biography

  Sarath D. Gunapala received a First Class Honors BSc in physics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1980, and an MS and PhD in Solid State Physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. In his early years of research, Sarath worked on opto-electronic devices at Bell Communication Research and AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Later he joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where he is a Fellow, Senior Research Scientist and a Principal Member of the Engineering Staff. Sarath has authored over 380 publications and 14 book chapters; given over 300 presentations including more than 80 invited talks; and holds 27 U.S. patents. He has received numerous awards including the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal; NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal; SPIE George Goddard Award; Military Sensing Symposia (MSS) Levinstein Award; MSS Herschel Award; NASA Space Act Award for Exceptional Performance; Career Achievement Award from U.S. Army/RDECOM/CERDEC; IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Award; IEEE Aron Kressel Award, and was inducted to the United States Space Technology Hall of Fame 2001. In 2011, Sarath received the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Magellan Award for his leadership in the development of technology for high performance infrared focal planes for space exploration. He is a Fellow of IEEE, Optica, and SPIE.
  Dr. Gunapala’s research interests range from compound semiconductor heterostructure optoelectronic devices to remote sensing observational instruments. He has carried out extensive work in his early career developing Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIPs) and Quantum Dot Infrared Photodetectors for remote sensing applications. Later Sarath and his group pioneered the High Operating Temperature (HOT) superlattice Barrier Infrared Detector (BIRD) technology, which is a key breakthrough in infrared photodetectors. His current interest is to reduce the Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) factor of Earth observational instruments based on HOT focal plane array subsystems to enable low cost SmallSat and SmallSat constellations.

The Young Scientist Award

• 
  Prof. Kunal Mukherjee (Stanford University, USA)

  For contribution to developing new insight into dislocation behavior in III-V/Si structures via synthesis and in-situ microscopy for high temperature reliable quantum dot lasers on silicon.

  Biography

  Kunal Mukherjee is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. His research interests are in compound semiconductor thin film synthesis and defect science for optoelectronics. Prof. Mukherjee received his B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, M.S. from the National University of Singapore, and his M.Eng. and Ph.D. from MIT in Materials Science and Engineering. Before joining Stanford, he has been an assistant professor in the Materials department at the University of California Santa Barbara (2016-2020), held postdoctoral appointments at IBM TJ Watson Research Center and MIT, and worked as a transceiver engineer at Finisar Corporation (now II-VI). Prof. Mukherjee has received the US National Science Foundation Early Career Award and the Corbett Prize at the International Conference on Defects in Semiconductors for his work on heteroepitaxial integration and dislocation engineering of compound semiconductors for infrared optoelectronics.
  Prof. Mukherjee has contributed to the understanding of dislocation behavior in III-V on Si heterostructures, leading to the development of high temperature reliable InAs quantum dot lasers grown on silicon. He showed how the mismatch in thermal expansion coefficients between III-V and silicon together with lattice hardening by indium in quantum wells and quantum dots cause reliability-limiting misfit dislocations in lasers on silicon. Prof. Mukherjee and his research group developed dislocation trapping layers to counter this effect and contributed to dramatically improved III-V/Si laser lifetimes at 80° C achieved in recent years. In concert with these activities, he has initiated new modes of in-situ microscopy and microanalysis to probe dislocation pipe diffusion and recombination-enhanced dislocation glide and climb in GaAs-based materials by combining electron channeling contrast imaging, cathodoluminescence imaging, and atom probe tomography.

Welker Award

Quantum Devices Award

IPRM Award

ISCS Young Scientist Award

CSW Best Student Paper Award