Speaker details

Shuji Nakamura

Shuji Nakamura was born on May 22, 1954 in Ehime, Japan. He obtained B.E., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokushima, Japan in 1977, 1979, and 1994, respectively. He joined Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd in 1979. In 1988, he spent a year at the University of Florida as a visiting research associate. In 1989 he started the research of blue LEDs using group-III nitride materials. In 1993 and 1995 he developed the first group-III nitride-based blue/green LEDs. He also developed the first group-III nitride-based violet laser diodes (LDs) in 1995. He has received a number of awards, including: the Nishina Memorial Award (1996), MRS Medal Award (1997), IEEE Jack A. Morton Award, the British Rank Prize (1998) and Benjamin Franklin Medal Award (2002). He was elected as the member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2003. Also, he received the Millennium Technology Prize in 2006. Since 2000, he is a professor of Materials Department of University of California Santa Barbara. He holds more than 100 patents and has published more than 200 papers in this field.