Stillman Lecture Series

Particularly focused on our graduate students and post-docs, lecture events are held each spring and fall, and no registration is required to attend. The lecture typically begins with an informal gathering where audience members can chat with the speaker, followed by the formal talk. At the conclusion of the speaker’s presentation, we hold a reception to encourage networking and the additional exchange of ideas and projects.

Celebrating A Scientific Research Giant: Gregory E. Stillman

A native Nebraskan, Gregory E. Stillman graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1958 with a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering. He next served in the U.S. Air Force as an officer and pilot affiliated with the Strategic Air Command, before entering the University of Illinois graduate program in electrical engineering in 1963. After earning his Ph.D. in 1967—his mentor was Professor Nick Holonyak Jr.—he joined the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, working there until he was invited to serve as a member of the U of I electrical engineering faculty in 1975.

His research and teaching were key to building and sustaining engineering’s legacy at Illinois. Today’s wireless and broadband communications owe much to Stillman’s work. He contributed to the development of advanced characterization techniques for carrier mobility, photoconductivity, far infrared emission, and photothermal methods of studying impurities, and many of these evaluation techniques are now widely used for compound semiconductors. Stillman’s leadership was also critical to the opening of the Microelectronics Laboratory in 1989, the precursor to today's HMNTL.

A prolific researcher and author in the field, he published over 300 papers. One of the most notable observations made by those asked to describe him is that he was always a caring mentor; he supervised the doctoral work of forty students while at Illinois, and taught hundreds.

Our Speakers

April 11, 2019

H.-S. Philip Wong

 

 “New Memory Leads the Way to Better Computing.” Dr. Wong is the vice president of Corporate Research at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., where he leads the exploration of new semiconductor technologies, and he is the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. His research translates discoveries in science into practical technologies and covers a broad range of topics including carbon electronics, 2D-layered materials, wireless implantable biosensors,, directed self-assembly, device modeling, brain-inspired computing, non-volatile memory, and monolithic 3D integration.

September 26, 2018

Dr. Aydogan Ozcan

 

“Deep Learning-enabled Computational Microscopy and Sensing”. Our speaker was the renowned Dr. Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA. Ozcan is the Chancellor’s Professor at UCLA, an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and leads the Bio- and Nano-Photonics Laboratory at UCLA. He is also the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. He holds 37 issued patents and more than 20 pending patent applications, and is the author of one book and the co-author of over 500 peer-reviewed publications in major scientific journals and conferences. He has received major awards for his seminal contributions to computational imaging, sensing, and diagnostics, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, International Commission for Optics Prize, and the Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award.

 

April 23, 2018

Dr. John Bowers

 

“Progress in Bonding and Epitaxial Growth for Heterogeneous Photonic Integrated Circuits”. The first Stillman Lecture was delivered by the distinguished Professor John Bowers, from the University of California Santa Barbara Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Bowers holds the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology, and he is the Director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency. He worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories and Honeywell prior to joining UCSB. Bowers was excited to be the first speaker for the new Stillman Lecture Series: “Greg Stillman was a hero of mine, and a model of a great faculty member and scientist. I will do my best to deliver a lecture worthy of this honor.”