I am pleased to share that I am promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the ECE ILLINOIS.

Heartfelt thanks to my family, friends, collaborators, colleagues, ICORLAB group members and alumni, XSEDE, NSF, NASA and AFOSR program reviewers and managers, and ECE Department, Holonyak Lab, Grainger College and U of I administration, staff, and faculty.

Tenure is a key milestone in an academic career, cherishing the junior faculty’s contributions and privileging him/her with responsibilities of life-long visionary research, innovative teaching, and distinguished service.

• Success is rarely achieved alone. Many thanks to all my family for the love, support, and understanding. Special thanks to my graduate student researchers, #1 Hsuan-Ping, #2 Kihoon, #3 Richard, #4 Yi-Chia, undergraduate student researchers #1 Philip, #2 Begum, #3 Kai, #4 Estelle, #5 Taiming, #6 Ryan, #7 Josh, #8 Josephine, #9 Dennis, and #10 Jarod, summer interns #1 Larissa, #2 Callan, and #3 Zach, and visiting K-12 teachers #1 Geoffrey and #2 Kelly for their numerous functions and countless roles in my tenure-track years. Many thanks to all my collaborators and colleagues who helped me personally and professionally via sparing minutes of verbal wisdom to years of mentorship.
• Success is rarely achieved in a short time. Special thanks to my first teachers, my parents, Sevim (Turkish & Literature) and Mehmet (Mathematics) and my big brother Prof. Baris (EEE Dept., METU, Ankara, Turkey) for nurturing my lifelong curiosity; my alma maters Bornova Anatolian High School, Izmir Science High School, Bilkent and Northwestern Universities, and IBM T.J. Watson Research Center for giving me the technical and professional skills; and ILLINOIS for a unique collegial atmosphere and frontiering research infrastructure. Many thanks to the Holonyak Lab, ECE Department, and Grainger College for the critical roles in my collegiate activities and Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education and Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education for the outreach opportunities.
• Success is rarely luck. Special thanks to AFOSR and NSF and their young investigator research (YIP) and faculty early career development (CAREER) programs. AFOSR YIP program enabled us to investigate novel wide bandgap RF devices and their thermal engineering and NSF CAREER program enabled us to explore novel emitters and understand loss mechanisms. Thanks to NASA for allowing us to explore ultraviolet laser diodes for space-based light interferometry. Thanks to Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) for supporting our simulation studies on new materials and their fundamental properties. Many thanks to academic societies and foundations, government agencies, and companies who have been providing constructive feedback and supporting my research and research group.

My tenure-track academic journey is crowned with 3 Ph.D. Theses, 1 M.S. thesis, 5 senior theses and with:

• ICORLAB’s PhD alumni. Congrats to

          #1 Dr. Hsuan-Ping Lee, joined Intel as a Device Engineer,
          #2 Dr. Kihoon Park, joined Intel as a Software Engineer,
          #3 Dr. Richard Liu.

• ICORLAB’s UG alumni. Congrats to

          #1 Philip Tsai, joined Texas Instruments as a Process Engineer,
          #2 Begum Kasap, joined University of California, Davis as a PhD student,
          #3 Kai Zhang, joined RWTH Aachen University as an MS student,
          #4 Estelle Kao, joined Intel as a Product Development Engineer,
          #5 Taiming Zhang, joined Stanford University as an MS student, 
          #6 Ryan Grady, joined Stanford University as a PhD student,
          #7 Josh Perozek, joined M.I.T. as a PhD student,
          #8 Josephine Melia, joined UIUC as a PhD student,
          #9 Dennis Rich, joined Stanford University as a PhD student,
          #10 Jarod Meyer, joined Stanford University as a PhD student.

• ICORLAB’s valuable research and outreach collaborations.

           thanks to

• •  Argonne National Laboratory, Air Force Research Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory; University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Minnesota, University of Notre Dame, Stanford University; Veeco, IBM, Crosslight, MicroLink Devices, and Diamond Foundry,
  • Jefferson Middle School (Champaign, IL), Campus Middle School for Girls (Urbana, IL), and Canby High School (Canby, OR).

• 20+ new journal papers as the lead-PI. Select contributions are in the areas of

                     [PHOTONICS] (select research by (now) Dr. Liu and (future) Dr. Tsai)

• • Impact of transitional metals on (In)GaN quantum wells., [Appl. Phys. Lett. 116, 192106 (2020)].
  • Revealing theoretically the fundamental advantages of cubic III-nitrides and heterostructures over the hexagonal ones, [ACS Omega  5, 3917 – 3923  (2020)); Sci. Rep.  9:6583 (2019)].
  • Demonstrating single-crystal single-phase low-defectivity high-efficiency cubic GaN on Si, [ACS Photonics 5 (3), 955–963 (2018); Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 042103 (2016)].

                      [ELECTRONICS] (select research by (now) Dr. Lee)

• • Impact of post-metallization annealing on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, [IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 67 (7), 2760 (2020)].
  • Reporting optimal buffer layer configurations for high-mobility (>1800 cm²/V∙s) 2DEG characteristics in AlGaN/GaN HEMT designs on Si (111) substrates, [Sci. Rep. 6: 37588 (2016)].

                      [THERMOMETRY] (select research by (now) Dr. Park)

• • Isolating and revealing the impact of dislocations on GaN thermal conductivity & create a new theory to capture the experimental observations, [J. Appl. Phys. 126, 185103 (2019)].
  • Proposing a new and simple passive cooling for GaN RF devices via thermal budget optimization through substrate choice, buffer layer thickness, and interface engineering, [Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 151904 (2016)].
• (thanks to reviewers, editors, and publishers)

• Creation of the ECE 443 LEDs and Solar Cells course from ground up that unites physics, simulation and experimental aspects in advanced semiconductor devices,

           thanks to

• • course alumni and TAs for all the content input and troubleshooting,
  • U of I, Northwestern University, IBM, and NRL for sample donations,
  • Crosslight and MicroLink Devices for supporting and sponsoring Best Project Awards.

• Distinguished junior faculty recognitions
  • Faculty Advisor, Lemelson-MIT Student Prize Graduate Finalist Mr. Richard Liu,
  • National Inventors Hall of Fame Collegiate Inventors Competition Finalist
       (Team: Cubic LEDs, Graduate Student: Mr. Richard Liu, Advisor: Prof. Can Bayram),
  • Invitation to the China-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium,
  • International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Prize in Optics,
  • IEEE Nanotechnology Council Early Career Award,
  • Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research for Assistant Professor,
  • Turkish American Scientists & Scholars Association Young Scholar Award,
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students,
  • NSF CAREER Award,
  • CS Mantech Best Student Paper Award
       (Graduate Student: Mr. Richard Liu, Advisor: Prof. Can Bayram),
  • AFOSR Young Investigator Award,
  • Collins Scholar,
  • IEEE Electron Devices Society Early Career Award.

I am to continue shaping our future with the very same inaugural spirit John Milton Gregory, our first regent, well-put in 1868 as:

“It is no ordinary work which we are set to do, and it comes to us under no ordinary conditions. We are not here to reproduce, in this new locality, some old and well known style of college or university… The hungry eyes of toiling millions are turned, with mingled hope and fear, upon us, to see what new and better solution we can possibly offer of the great problems on which their well-being and destiny depend.”

IMPACT OF THE GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

– Nobel Prizes for…The MRI. Superfluidity. Separated oscillatory fields. Radioimmunoassay. Predictions of supercurrents through a tunnel barrier. Superconductivity. Gell-Mann-Low equations of particle theory. The anti-proton. Parity laws of elementary particles. The magnetic moment of the electron. The transistor.

– Inventors, Designers, and Discoverers of…The LED. Medical ultrasound. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. The first hand-held calculator. VLSI technology. The integrated circuit. The quantum well laser. JavaScript. The plasma display. The Burj Kalifa. Broadband internet. Lotus Notes. THX. PLATO. Flexible electronics. CMOS technology. Real-time ray tracing. MPI. “Earthquake-proof” building design. Interactive CAD/CAM systems. Electronic design automation software. The Gamma-electric cell. HDF. Molecular beam epitaxy. Sound on film. Willis Tower. LLVM. The .jpeg file. Prestressed concrete. The modern web browser.

– Current and Former Founders, Presidents, and CEOs of…YouTube. Tesla. Foxconn Interconnect Technology. PayPal. Yelp. Sargent & Lundy. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Texas Instruments. Boeing Phantom Works. Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Ocient. Cleverbridge. GE. Informatica. DEC. Siebel Systems. II-VI, Inc. The Chicago Bears. The Jacksonville Jaguars. The NFL. C3.ai. IBM. Vocareum. XILINX. Carver Industries. Advanced Micro Devices. Supertex, Inc. Versabar, Inc. Lante Corporation. Vulcan Spring & Manufacturing Co. Grainger. International Paper. Flex-N-Gate. Generac. Avant. Match.com. Affirm. Montgomery Elevator Company. Innoventor. Cancer Centers of America. Hsin Chong Construction. Amber Ag. Tovala. MakerGirl. Greenlight Planet. Vibrynt, Inc. Mitel. Psyonic. Milhouse Engineering & Construction. Infinium Capital Management. Bloom Energy. BP.

Assoc. Prof. Can Bayram, 08/16/2020.