Fall 2025 Holonyak Workshop
Holonyak Workshop
September 11-12, 2025
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus
The in-person workshop will include invited talks on state-of-the-art developments as well as panels with participants from academia, government, and industry to inform and debate next-generation topics and trajectories related to LEDs, lasers, high-speed and high-power electronics, and heterogeneous integration.
Keynote Speakers
Kei May LAU
Kei May Lau is a Research Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST). She received her degrees from the University of Minnesota and Rice University and served as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst before joining HKUST in the summer of 2000. Lau is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of IEEE, Optica (formerly OSA), and the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering. She was also a recipient of the IPRM award, IET J J Thomson medal for Electronics, Optica Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, IEEE Photonics Society Aron Kressel Award, US National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Awards for Women (FAW) Scientists and Engineers, and Hong Kong Croucher Senior Research Fellowship. She was an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and Electron Device Letters, an Associate Editor for the Journal of Crystal Growth and Applied Physics Letters. Lau’s research work focuses on the development of monolithic integration of semiconductor devices and systems on industry-standard silicon substrates by MOCVD. She was an early explorer of this approach and has produced record-breaking results in this area. In 2008 her group was the first to demonstrate the highest mobility and millimeter-wave (fT > 200 GHz) III- V transistors lattice-matched to InP grown directly on Si. She also led the development of 1.5 µm room-temperature electrically pumped III-V quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on CMOS-standard (001) Si substrate. Recently, her group developed the lateral aspect ratio trapping (LART) technique to grow III-V active devices in the same plane as the Si layer enabling efficient coupling with Si waveguides on silicon-on-insulator (SOI). They demonstrated telecom InGaAs/InP quantum well lasers and high-performance photodetectors selectively grown on SOI by LART.
Steve DenBaars
Dr. Steven P. DenBaars is a Professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as the Executive Director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1991, Professor DenBaars joined the University of California, Santa Barbara faculty as a Professor of Materials and Electrical & Computer Engineering. Since becoming an employee of the university, Professor DenBaars has helped pioneer the field of Solid-State Lighting, establishing and improving Gallium Nitride materials and devices used for lighting and displays. His specific research interests include growth of wide-bandgap semiconductors (GaN based) and their application to Blue LEDs and lasers, and high power electronic devices. This research has led to the first US university demonstration of a Blue GaN laser diode. In 2002, Steven DenBaars, Shuji Nakamura, Jim Speck and Umesh Mishra collaborated to establish the Solid State Lighting and Display Center which evolved to the Solid State Lighting and Energy center in 2007. Additionally, Professor DenBaars is the Co-Founder of three University start-up companies focused on the recruitment of graduate students upon the completion of their programs.
Amongst other prestigious awards and recognitions, Professor DenBaars is the recipient of the National Scientist Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1994 and received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Fellow Award in 2005 and the IEEE Aron Kressel Award in 2010. Steven DenBaars is a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He has over 800+ publications and over 63 patents filed.
Confirmed Invited Speakers
Zetian Mi, U. Michigan
Fred Kish
Jonathan Wierer
Patrick Fay
Tentative Agenda
Location: Beckman auditorium and HMNTL
8:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Welcoming and Opening Remarks
Student Talks
Breakfast Mixer for Students and Attendees | Optional Lab Tours