Faculty Profile
Lester Eastman
Department: ECE
Title: John L. Given Foundation Chair Professor of Engineering
Personal Web Site:
http://people.ece.cornell.edu/eastman/
Degrees earned:
B.S. Cornell University 1953
M.S. Cornell University 1955
Ph.D. Cornell University 1957
Address:
Office:
425 Phillips Hall
Ithaca, NY, 14853
Office Phone: (607) 255-4369
Biography:
After joining the Cornell faculty in 1957, he concentrated on microwave active devices. Starting in 1964 he pioneered research in compound semiconductor materials and devices for microwave and semiconductor laser applications. He is a founding member, in 1977, of the NSF program at Cornell on submicron, now nano, structures used in microwave transistors. These semiconductor materials were earlier Gallium Arsenide and related alloys, then he moved to Indium Phosphide and related alloys, and recently on to Gallium Nitride and related alloys. The research that he and his students have done now permeates commercial (cell phone) and defense (radar and satellite communications) applications. He has supervised 120 PhD degrees. They hold over 20 faculty positions in the USA and overseas, as well as positions in patent law, US Government offices, and in industry.
Professor Eastman has received several national and international awards and medals, is a member of the National Academy of Engineers, and has organized on-going national and international conferences in his field. He has been the external examiner of several PhD's in Europe. He served on the DOD's Advisory Group on Electron Devices for six years in the USA, and for six years on the Senior Advisory Board of the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Physics in Germany. He has consulted for several companies and the MIT Lincoln Laboratories, in the USA, and for three companies in Europe.
Research interests:
He and his students are working on Gallium Nitride and related materials, grown by molecular beam epitaxy in cooperation with Senior Research Associate Dr. William Schaff. They also do research on microwave power transistors using these materials, with diamond substrates to double the rate of heat removal.. The research is funded by several companies and ONR. There is also a project on Gallium Nitride tera hertz oscillators, based on strong acceleration of electrons in short structures. Two students, working closely with Dr. Schaff, are also doing pioneering research on solar cells, using Indium Gallium Nitride, an alloy that can be used across the entire solar spectrum.
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