UF engineering professor wins prestigious electronics award

October 8, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida College of Engineering professor has become the latest engineering faculty member to win one of the most prestigious awards in the electronics and semiconductor fields.

Steve Pearton, a distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Electron Devices Society’s J.J. Ebers Award. The award recognizes Pearton for “developing advanced compound-semiconductor processing techniques, and clarifying the roles of defects and impurities in compound-semiconductor devices.”

Pearton is the third UF engineering professor to hold the award. The others are Jerry Fossum, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, who won the award in 2004, and Chih-Tang Sah, graduate research professor and Pittman Eminent Scholar of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Sah, who received the award in 1981 while at the University of Illinois, has been a UF faculty member since 1988.

“Having three very distinguished faculty members who have won the Ebers award is a wonderful testament to the quality, originality, and impact of our research in the field of electronic devices,” said Pramod Khargonekar, dean of the engineering college. “Their work has had tremendous impact on the fundamental science and engineering of semiconductor devices, and has contributed to the tremendous growth of the semiconductor technology at the heart of information technology revolution.”

Pearton, who earned his doctorate from Australia’s University of Tasmania in 1983, joined the UF department of materials science and engineering in 1994 after spending a decade at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey.

One of the engineering college’s most accomplished faculty members, he has published 1,280 papers, given 1,000 talks and secured 12 pending or current patents. His work has been cited 23,000 times in academic papers by other scientists and engineers.

“I’m glad to have won this award from IEEE,” Pearton said. “It reflects well on the environment and quality within UF’s College of Engineering.”