Contact: Terry Costlow Four U.S. IEEE
Members to Receive WASHINGTON (04 November 2003) — Four U.S. IEEE members, all involved with LED technology, will be awarded the National Medal of Technology on 6 November. President George W. Bush will make the presentations in a White House ceremony. Nick Holonyak, Jr., an IEEE Fellow who built the first LED (light-emitting diode), will receive the award along with two of his former graduate students, M. George Craford and Russell Dean Dupuis. Calvin H. Carter, whose work in silicon carbide advanced LED technology, will also receive the medal. Holonyak built the first LED in 1962, creating the technology that spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. He is one of only 13 Americans who has received both the National Medal of Technology and National Medal of Science, the latter awarded in 1990. "I received the medal of Science from the first President Bush and now the Medal of Technology will come from the second President Bush," said Holonyak, an IEEE Medal of Honor winner who has been a professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign since 1963. Craford, chief technology officer of LumiLeds Lighting, made the first yellow LED in 1972. He is currently involved in developing high-brightness LEDs. Dupuis is chair of the electro-optics department at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the first to demonstrate that metalorganic chemical vapor deposition could be used to grow semiconductor films, a technique that is now used to produce LEDs and thin-film semiconductors. Both men were graduate students under Holonyak. Carter's innovations of silicon carbide and related semiconductor material created the foundation material now used for blue and green LEDs, as well as wide bandgap semiconductors. He formed Cree Inc. in 1987 and won several Department of Defense Small Business Innovative Research contracts. The National Medal of Technology is the highest honor bestowed by the president to America's leading innovators. The award was first presented in 1985 and is designed to "recognize technological innovators who have made lasting contributions to enhancing America's competitiveness and standard of living." IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., created in 1973 to advance the public good, while promoting the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 235,000 electrical, electronics, computer and software engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org.
1828 L Street, N.W., Suite 1202 Washington, DC 20036-5104 Phone: 202-785-0017, Fax: 202-785-0835 | Top of Page | News Releases | IEEE News | IEEE | IEEE-USA | Last Updated: 04
November 2003 |