EDS Members Named Winners of 2003 IEEE Medals

Two EDS members won 2003 IEEE medals. Professor Nick Holonyak, Jr. won the IEEE Medal of Honor and Dr. Donald R. Scifres won the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal.

IEEE Medal of Honor

Nick Holonyak

"For a career of pioneering contributions to semiconductors, including the growth of semiconductor alloys and heterojunctions, and to visible light-emitting diodes and injection lasers."
Hailed as the "father of semiconductor light emitter technology in the western world," Nick Holonyak, Jr. is commonly credited with inventing the light-emitting diode (LED) and the first semiconductor laser to operate in the visible spectrum. Light sources based on his work dominate the optical communications and home entertainment industries. He is the first to make III-V alloy devices.
The John Bardeen Chair and professor at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Holonyak was Bardeen's first graduate student and enjoyed a 40-year friendship and collaboration with him. Since 1963 Dr. Holonyak and his students have made seminal contributions to semiconductor lasers and LEDs, and since 1977 to quantum well lasers. Virtually all semiconductor lasers today use quantum wells for fiber-optic communications, compact disk and digital videodisk players, medical diagnosis, surgery, ophthalmology and many other applications.
In the early 1980s, Dr. Holonyak's group introduced impurity-induced layer disordering, which converts lower band gap layers of a semiconductor structure into intermixed higher band gap alloy. The discovery of this process solved the low-reliability issues previously plaguing lasers, and is used also to define semiconductor waveguides. With this technology, lasers exhibit higher performance and durability, making them ideal for DVD players and other optical storage equipment. In 1990 he and his students introduced the III-V oxide technology now used universally to define VCSEL (vertical laser) currents and cavities.
Dr. Holonyak began his career at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1954. He joined General Electric's Advanced Semiconductor Lab in 1957, where he helped develop thyristors in 1957-60, invented the basic symmetrical switch in household light-dimmer switches, and made the first visible semiconductor laser and visible LED in 1962.
Dr. Holonyak holds 31 patents, has published numerous papers and co-authored two books. A Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Optical Society of America, he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences. His honors include the IEEE Jack A. Morton Award, the IEEE Edison Medal, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America, the National Academy of Sciences Award for the Industrial Application of Science, the John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia, and the Japan Prize.

IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal

Donald Scifres

"For pioneering contributions to the technology and business development of semiconductor lasers."
A laser physics business and technology visionary, Donald Scifres helped launch a revolution in the optical communications industry. His founding contributions to distributed feedback lasers, high power diode arrays, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and more have consistently delivered sophisticated devices into the market.
At Xerox PARC, where he worked from 1972 to 1983, he and his coworkers patented the pioneering distributed feedback semiconductor injection laser. It became the preferred light source for high-speed, long distance optical fiber communications.
In 1983, Dr. Scifres founded Spectra Diode Laboratories, Inc., which became a leading supplier of fiber optic communications components and modules. The company's products included high-power semiconductor lasers, erbium doped fiber amplifiers, light modulators, optical performance monitors, planar light wave circuits and high-speed electronics for powering fiber optic communications. SDL merged with JDS Uniphase Corporation in 2001, and Scifres became co-chairman and chief strategy officer until his retirement in January 2003. Scifres is now chairman of SDL Ventures, an investment company.
Dr. Scifres holds more than 130 patents and has published more than 300 articles and book contributions. An active Fellow of the IEEE, he has been president, board member and technical committee chair of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society. He has also been a director of the Optical Society of America and president and director of the Lasers and Electro Optics Manufacturers Association.
Dr. Scifres' honors include the IEEE Jack A. Morton Medal, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and the IEEE LEOS Award for Engineering Achievement. A member of the International Society for Photonics and Optical Engineering, the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the OSA, he has also earned the Rank Prize from the Rank Foundation, the OSA's Edwin H. Land Medal and the American Physical Society's George E. Pake Prize.