The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named 175 leaders of academic inventions to NAI fellow status. Michael Shur, the Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts Professor of Solid State Electronics at Rensselaer, joins this year’s group of innovative luminaries honored with the NAI organization’s prestigious recognition for academic inventors. Shur is a recognized leader for his pioneering contributions to deep ultraviolet light-emitting diode technology.
Michael Shur
Election to NAI fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.
With the election of the 2016 class there are now 757 NAI fellows, representing 229 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes. The 2016 fellows are named inventors on 5,437 issued U.S. patents, bringing the collective patents held by all NAI fellows to more than 26,000.
Included among all NAI fellows are more than 94 presidents and senior leaders of research universities and nonprofit research institutes; 376 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; 28 inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame; 45 recipients of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation and U.S. National Medal of Science; 28 Nobel Laureates; 216 AAAS fellows; 126 IEEE fellows; and 116 fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; among other awards and distinctions.
The 2016 fellows will be inducted on April 6, 2017, as part of the sixth annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. U.S. Commissioner for Patents Andrew H. Hirshfeld will provide the keynote address for the induction ceremony.
“I congratulate Michael for this tremendous honor. It is a fitting recognition of his inventions at the intersection of advanced materials, solid-state devices, and integrated systems,” said Shekhar Garde, dean of engineering. “With his election, Michael joins two other Rensselaer researchers who are members of the National Academy of Inventors, Professor Jonathan Dordick and Professor Robert Linhardt. Through their inventions, these Rensselaer inventors are translating fundamental discoveries into important practical applications, and changing the world for the better.”
I congratulate Michael for this tremendous honor. It is a fitting recognition of his inventions at the intersection of advanced materials, solid-state devices, and integrated systems. With his election, Michael joins two other Rensselaer researchers who are members of the National Academy of Inventors. Through their inventions, they are translating fundamental discoveries into important practical applications, and changing the world for the better.”—Shekhar Garde
Shur is a recognized leader in solid-state devices. His research focuses on wide-band-gap photonic and high-power applications and new ballistic structures enabling plasmonic terahertz technology. His most important accomplishment is the development and commercialization of deep ultraviolet diodes. Another is the prediction of ballistic transport, and pioneering ballistic terahertz electronics devices, such as the plasmonic THz detectors. Other achievements include the first proposal and demonstration of polarization doping, used in all nitride transistors, and development and commercialization of the first complementary compound semiconductor transistors.
Shur joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1996 and was named the Patricia W. and C. Sheldon Roberts Professor of Solid State Electronics. He is a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Physical Society (APS), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Electrochemical Society (ECS), MRS, the Optical Society (OSA), the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), EMA, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has received several IEEE and other awards including the Tibbetts Award for Technology Commercialization. Shur was awarded honorary doctorates from St. Petersburg Technical University and the University of Vilnius.