Jan 20 2012
The College of Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is proud to announce the elevation of three of its faculty members to the rank of Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
The newly elected IEEE Fellows from UCSB are:
- Divyakant Agrawal, professor of Computer Science
- Kaustav Banerjee, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Chris Van de Walle, professor of Materials
In particular, Chris Van de Walle, professor of Materials, for contributions to the theory of interfaces, doping and defects in semiconductors.
Chris Van de Walle, professor of Materials at UCSB.
Dr. Van de Walle has been a leader in applying cutting-edge first-principles calculations to problems in semiconductors with high technological relevance, including predictions of heterojunction band alignments and the elucidation of doping problems. His work has impacted materials used for such varied applications as solid-state lighting, lasers, CMOS transistors, and quantum computing.
Van de Walle is Director of the Computational Materials Group and an affiliated faculty member with the California NanoSystems Institute, Institute for Energy Efficiency, Solid State Lighting and Energy Center , Center for Energy Efficient Materials , and Interdisciplinary Center for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors at UCSB. Before joining the UCSB Materials Department in 2004, Chris Van de Walle was a Principal Scientist in the Electronic Materials Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Van de Walle received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
"I am proud to congratulate our faculty for this distinctive honor bestowed by IEEE," said Rod Alferness, Dean of the UCSB College of Engineering. Alferness served as President of the IEEE Photonics Society and received the 2005 IEEE Photonics Award. "IEEE represents the world's most distinguished engineering, computing, and technology professionals. The achievements of Professors Agrawal, Banerjee, and Van de Walle reinforce the standard of excellence among our Engineering faculty."
"The announcement that three UCSB faculty have been appointed Fellows of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers is wonderful news and further evidence of the strength of UCSB's Engineering programs. I congratulate them and the College of Engineering for this much deserved recognition," said David Auston, Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency and Center for Energy Efficient Materials at UCSB.