9/28/2026 Cassandra Smith
The Nick Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory received an endowed directorship named for his former doctoral student, Russell Dupuis. The position is the first of its kind among Grainger Engineering's interdisciplinary research units.
Written by Cassandra Smith
Russell Dupuis was an Illinois undergraduate when he first joined Nick Holonyak Jr.'s lab. More than five decades later, after a career that helped light up the world, he has given $7.5 million to endow the directorship of the lab that now bears his mentor's name.
The gift establishes the Russell Dean Dupuis Directorship of the Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory (HMNTL), the first endowed directorship among The Grainger College of Engineering's interdisciplinary research units. It gives the director flexible, unrestricted funding each year to invest in the lab’s core research mission.
"I'm a farm boy, so I like to see things grow," he said. "One idea is to fund seed projects that have the potential to grow into something big."
Professor Minjoo Larry Lee will be the first to hold the title.
"Nick invented the first practical visible LED, and Russ pioneered MOCVD, the crystal-growth technique that made the LED revolution possible. With this gift, generations of HMNTL researchers will have the opportunity to build on that remarkable legacy of innovation. I'm deeply honored to be the first Russell D. Dupuis Director of HMNTL," Lee said.
Dupuis earned all three of his degrees in electrical engineering at Illinois (B.S. '70, M.S. '71, Ph.D. '73). "I was lucky to spend a summer as an undergraduate researcher in professor Holonyak's lab and then become a graduate student in his lab," he said.
His own big idea started as a seed project of sorts. After a stint at Texas Instruments, he joined Rockwell International, where he built a reactor mostly from salvaged parts to determine if metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), a laboratory curiosity at the time, could be used to grow optoelectronic devices. His first device was a solar cell. Lasers and LEDs soon followed, and MOCVD became the dominant technology worldwide for manufacturing lasers and LEDs of every color.
MOCVD also brought mentor and student back together. At the 1977 Device Research Conference, Holonyak sought Dupuis out and asked whether MOCVD could grow the ultrathin layers his group needed. In 1978, their collaboration produced the first quantum-well lasers to operate continuously at room temperature. The design went on to power fiber-optic communication, laser printers, and barcode scanners.
The two were honored together many times: the 2002 National Medal of Technology, the 2015 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2021 Queen Elizabeth II Prize for Engineering, each shared with fellow LED pioneers. When Dupuis received the Japan Prize in 2025, it came 30 years almost to the day after Holonyak won the same honor.
Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering, recalled Holonyak's words when the gift was announced: "Sure, our facilities are great, but our people are exceptional."
"Dr. Russell Dean Dupuis, a student of his, knows that as well as anyone," Bashir said.
From Rockwell, Dupuis went on to Bell Laboratories, the University of Texas at Austin and, in 2003, Georgia Tech, where he held the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and is now professor emeritus. His other honors include the IEEE Edison Medal, the 2022 Franklin Medal, and election to the National Academy of Engineering.
His path to Illinois began in a small farming community in Kankakee County, where his high school graduating class had fewer than 40 students. He said he was in awe when he arrived on campus. "There were 32,000 students and the only other person I knew on campus was my twin brother," he said. "So, it was interesting to come here and be a participant in this institution."
Education mattered in the Dupuis household, though his father had little of it himself. The oldest child in farming family of seven with French-Canadian origins, he was expected to work in the fields. "So, he never went to high school. He only had a seventh or eighth grade education because it was time to work," Dupuis said. His mother, from a German immigrant family, began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse at 18 and later became an educator with a two-year teaching degree from Illinois State Normal University and worked for her four-year degrees taking summer “extension” courses.
"So, they both understood the importance of education," Dupuis said.
“We are profoundly grateful to Dr. Dupuis,” Bashir said. “I look forward to seeing the next level of impact created at HMNTL thanks to this gift, and we will surely remember the generosity of Russell Dean Dupuis as we see and experience the transformative effects of that work radiate out from the laboratory.”
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Minjoo Lawrence Lee is a Grainger Engineering professor of electrical & computer engineering and is affiliated with materials science & engineering. Lee is director of the Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory.
Rashid Bashir, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and professor in the Department of Bioengineering, is also the Dean of the Illinois Grainger College of Engineering. He is a fellow of the IEEE and the Biomedical Engineering Society, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 2018 Pritzker Distinguished Lecture Award from BMES and was a key member of the founding team at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, the world’s first engineering-based medical school. He also serves as the Vice Chancellor for Chicago Strategic Partnerships.