Photo: Randy Lamb, UCSB

Shuji Nakamura
Professor of Materials
University of California, Santa Barbara

Shuji Nakamura was born on May 22, 1954 in Ehime, Japan. He obtained B.E., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokushima, Japan in 1977, 1979, and 1994, respectively. He joined Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd in 1979. In 1988, he spent a year at the University of Florida as a visiting research associate. In 1989, he started the research of blue LEDs using group-III nitride materials. In 1993 and 1995, he developed the first group-III nitride-based blue/green LEDs. He also developed the first group-III nitride-based violet laser diodes (LDs) in 1995. He has received a number of awards, including: the Nishina Memorial Award (1996), MRS Medal Award (1997), IEEE Jack A. Morton Award, the British Rank Prize (1998), the Benjamin Franklin Medal Award (2002), and the Millennium Technology Prize (2006). He was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2003. Since 2000, he has been a professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds more than 100 patents and has published more than 250 papers in his field.