ECE Professor Emeritus Jim Coleman received the ECE Distinguished Alumni Award September 10, 2015, for research accomplishments in the field of compound semiconductor crystal growth, teaching, and service.
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James J. Coleman (PhD ’75) was among five University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign electrical and computer engineering alumni to receive an ECE Distinguished Alumni Award September 10, 2015. Coleman was honored for research accomplishments in the field of compound semiconductor crystal growth, teaching, and service.
For 31 years, Coleman was a U of I ECE faculty member, and he was an MNTL faculty researcher since the building opened in 1989. He retired from Illinois in 2013.
Today, he is head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. His work involves the development of novel quantum-well and nanostructure strained-layer semiconductor diode lasers and other photonic devices. Professor Coleman has produced more than 425 journal papers, 13 book chapters, 10 U.S. patents, and 100 invited presentations. His work has significantly popularized semiconductor lasers, and has refined both semiconductor devices and the materials used to make them.