Reet Chaudhuri M.S. '16, M.S. '19, Ph.D. '21 is the winner of this year's ECE Outstanding Thesis Research Award. The annual award is given to a graduating Ph.D. student from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering based on the significance of their doctoral research.
Chaudhuri’s thesis title was “Integrated Electronics on Aluminum Nitride: Materials and Devices.” The work builds on scientific breakthroughs achieved working with the Jena-Xing Lab, establishing the aluminum nitride (AlN) electronics platform, exploiting its unique capability of integrating active RF devices, such as >100 GHz transistors, with passive RF piezoelectric devices such as acoustic filters, antennas, and waveguides, onto a single chip.
“My research overcomes the fundamental limitation of low electrical conductivity of aluminum nitride,” Chaudhuri explained, “by engineering the intrinsic polarization fields of III-nitride semiconductor crystals and using careful epitaxial crystal growth to demonstrate high-conductivity 2D electron (n-type) and hole (p-type) channels on AlN.”
Chaudhuri’s Ph.D. research spun-off an early stage start-up called Soctera Inc., co-founded with Jena-Xing Lab mate and Austin Hickman, Ph.D. '21. In an email, Chaudhuri expressed thanks and appreciation for the mentors and colleagues who have influenced his career path.
“I would like to thank my advisors, Professors Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing, for their guidance and for providing us with resources that made it a lot easier to fully focus on the science,” Chaudhuri said. “I would also like to acknowledge the support of my close collaborators in the group, Dr. Austin Hickman, Ph.D.’21 and Dr. Samuel Bader, Ph.D.'20, as well as my wife Dr. Shilpa Sahoo, Ph.D.'21 and my extended family. It is truly an honor receiving this award and being recognized for my efforts.”
After a brief period working in the Jena-Xing Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, Chaudhuri will join Intel Corporation to apply his knowledge of semiconductor device physics to the development of next-generation transistors.
The ECE Graduate Committee reviews award nominations and the ECE Director of Graduate Studies oversees the process. In addition to a cash prize, the winner will be presented with an engraved plaque near the end of the semester.
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