March 4, 2004
Troy, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today
announced the appointment of two new faculty members, thereby
completing its Future Chips Constellation, the first of several
"critical mass" groupings of world-caliber faculty in focal
research areas. The new faculty are Shawn-Yu Lin, Ph.D., a
recognized authority in photonics research, and Christian M.
Wetzel, Ph.D., a research pioneer in semiconductor device
design and manufacturing.
"The research program in the Future Chips Constellation aims
at nothing less than transforming many sectors of the economy,
including communications, medicine, defense, entertainment, and
the environment," Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson
said. "We are delighted to have these stellar individuals join
our dynamic research environment, working to develop
next-generation technology in semiconductor design and
performance."
A new concept in academia, a constellation is led by
outstanding faculty in fields of strategic importance. Each
constellation at Rensselaer is focused on specific research
programs and comprises a multidisciplinary mix of senior and
junior faculty, post docs, and graduate students. The completed
Future Chips Constellation will focus on innovations in
materials and devices, in solid state and smart lighting, and
will extend to applications such as sensing, communications,
and biotechnology.
Lin currently heads Sandia National Laboratories'
multimillion-dollar research and development effort in photonic
crystal devices, located in Albuquerque, N.M. He also directs a
U.S. Department of Energy multi-laboratories initiative in
Nano-Structural Photonics. At Rensselaer, Lin will enhance the
research capabilities of several key centers, including the New
York state-supported Focus Center for Interconnects and the
Center for Broadband Data Transport Science and Technology, a
partnership between Rensselaer and IBM. He will join Rensselaer
on July 1, 2004.
Wetzel, who joins Rensselaer this week, previously was senior
scientist with Uniroyal Optoelectronics in Tampa, Fla. He also
held research fellowships at the University of California
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and
at the Meijo University High-Tech Research Center in Nagoya,
Japan. The innovations he has demonstrated and his industrial
experience are assets in the transfer of promising research to
commercial products.
"The two new faculty appointments have great records of
accomplishment," said E. Fred Schubert, the Wellfleet Senior
Constellation Professor in Future Chips Research. "Dr. Lin has
conducted pioneering and seminal research in photonics,
photonic crystals, and waveguide devices. He will add a new
dimension to Rensselaer's research endeavors.
"Dr. Wetzel has an impressive list of research
accomplishments, including many fundamental and applied
contributions in solid-state physics and optoelectronics,"
Schubert said. "This constellation will focus on devices and
systems based on optoelectronics and photonics, which is
evolving as a major pillar in modern science and
technology."
Other constellations at Rensselaer—Multiscale Computation,
Tetherless World, Functional Tissue Engineering, Biocatalysis
and Metabolic Engineering, and Integrative Systems Biology—are
currently being staffed and developed with completion expected
in 2005.
Those upcoming appointments to the constellations are part of
an unprecedented expansion at Rensselaer that, by the end of
this year, will include 127 new tenured and tenure-track
faculty added in the last three years — 71 in new
positions.
Rensselaer's new Future Chips Constellation members have
demonstrated stellar achievements. Lin pioneered the
development of photonic-crystal nanostructures for
communication, energy, and defense applications. Wetzel has
demonstrated green-light-emitting diodes of very high
intensity.
"We will focus on understanding the fundamental interplay
between photonic emission processes and the nanostructure of
materials, materials defects, and materials synthesis,"
Schubert said. "The Future Chips Constellation has broad
expertise in experimental capabilities in these areas."
Lin received his bachelor's degree from National Taiwan
University, his master's degree from the University of North
Carolina, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
Princeton in 1992. In 2002, Lin was named a fellow of the
American Physical Society. Additionally, he has won several
awards, including the "Asia-America Engineer-of-the-Year" award
from the Chinese Institute of Engineering, the "R&D 100"
award from R&D magazine, a "NOVA" award from Sandia
National Laboratories, and the "Technology of the Year" award
from Industry Week magazine.
Wetzel received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the
Technical University of Munich, which awarded him a Ph.D. in
physics summa cum laude in 1993. Wetzel previously won the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft research fellowship. He is a
member of the American Physical Society, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Deutsche
Physikalische Gesellshaft, and the Materials Research Society,
where he has been an organizer of Electronic Materials
Conferences since 1999.
Constellations at Rensselaer span multiple academic
disciplines. Professors Lin and Wetzel are being appointed in
the Department of Physics. Professor Schubert holds
appointments in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and
Systems Engineering as well as in Physics.
Contact: Robert Pini
Phone: (518) 276-6050
E-mail: pinir@rpi.edu