Executive committee member details

Markus Pessa

Markus Pessa is the Founder and Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), the largest organization of optoelectronics and ultra-fast optics in Finland (founded in 1999), and a professor of the semiconductor technology at the Tampere Uni-versity of Technology. He led a Centre of Excellence in Research of the first Finnish CoE Program¸ nominated by the Academy of Finland for the years 1995 - 1999, after which he moved to ORC. With its six molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) reactors for growth of opto-electronic III-V semiconductors ORC is now the largest university-based MBE centre in Europe. It employs 53 researchers and support personnel at this writing. The research portfolio is € 3.6 – 3.9 million p.a., and investment in scientific equipment is € 16 - 17 million. 

Prof. Pessa has played a seminal role in establishing new industry in Finland (laser manufacture), which made about €15 million revenue and employed 150 workers in 2005. He was the first in Europe to use gas-source MBE for growth of phosphides and was among the first in the world to develop all-solid-source MBE. He has been developing GaAs, and InP, and dilute nitride based diode lasers and optical modulators. He has authored 400 journal articles on optoelectronics, semiconductor physics, electron spectroscopy, and surface science.

He is a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland, awarded by the President of the Republic of Finland, 1996, and was designated Professor of the Year (Finland) by the Trade Union of University Professors, 1998. He is a Member of many scientific organizations and the Editorial Boards of New Journal of Physics (London, 2003 - present) and IEE Optics Proceedings (London, 2005 - present). He is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the Kista Photonics Research Center (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) and the Finnish Cultural Insitute in Tokyo (Japan), and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (London). He was awarded an Innovation Prize for the development of lasers of ultra-fast high-power lasers by the New Technology Foundation (Finland), 2005.

He has been running 45 national and international projects, including six European Union program since 2000. The largest project amounts to a €3.6 million (Infrastructure Development Project combined with Service Centre Program in 2001 – 2005) granted by EU, Pirkanmaa Technology Centre, the City of Tampere, and industry. He was a Member a Committee of the Ministry of Education (2005) for planning a nationwide research pro-gram on Nanoscience and -technology for the years 2007 – 2010. He has supervised a large number of PhD Theses and acted as evaluation panels of EU Programs and national scientific programs.