Bio Sketch
Debdeep
Jena is the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering at Cornell University. He is in the departments of Electrical and
Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and is a field
member in the department of Applied and Engineering Physics. He joined Cornell in 2015 from the faculty at
Notre Dame where he was since August 2003, shortly after earning the Ph.D. in
Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa
Barbara (UCSB).
His
teaching and research are in the quantum physics of semiconductors and
electronic and photonic devices based on quantized semiconductor structures
(e.g. Nitrides, Oxides, 2D Materials), and their heterostructures with
superconductors, ferroelectrics and magnets.
His research group develops energy-efficient transistors, light-emitting
diodes and lasers, RF and power electronics, and quantum computation and
communication devices. His research is
driven by the goal to enable orders of magnitude increase in the energy
efficiency and speed for computation, memory, communications, lighting, and
electrical energy management ranging from the chip to the grid.
His
group's research has been published in more than 500 journal papers
including in Science, Nature, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters
and Electron Device Letters. A fellow of the American Physical Society and the
IEEE, his research is recognized by awards such as the 2012 ISCS young
scientist award, the 2014 MBE young scientist award, the 2024 Art Gossard MBE
innovator award, and awards from the industry such as the IBM faculty award in
2012, and the Intel Outstanding Research award in 2020. He has served in leadership roles in several
national centers such as the ME Commons NITRIDER, SRC/DARPA JUMP centers, DOE
EFRC, NSF DMREF, and NSF EFRI. His
research work has resulted in several patents
and two spinoff companies (Soctera, Gallox). His teaching awards include the 2024 Michael
Tien award at Cornell. Jena’s recorded lectures have
been viewed more than 250,000 times, and his textbook Quantum
Physics of Semiconductor Materials and Devices has been adopted by
several universities for undergraduate and graduate courses.