Yablonovitch, Eli
Oral history interview with Eli Yablonovitch, 2021 April 4.
Interview with Eli Yablonovitch, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. He talks about the overlap of these fields with applied physics, and he recounts his familys Jewish heritage in Europe and his origin as a Displaced Person born to refugee parents after World War II. Yablonovitch describes his childhood in Montreal, his early interests in science, and his undergraduate experience at McGill where he first became interested in transistors. He explains his decision to attend Harvard in Applied Physics for graduate school to and the intellectual influence of Mike Tinkham. Yablonovitch discusses his thesis research on semiconductor optics and four-wave mixing, and he describes the opportunities that led to his postdoctoral work at Bell Labs to work on laser-based communications systems. He discusses his return to Harvard as a faculty member and his subsequent solar research work at Exxon. Yablonovitch discusses his formative collaboration with Sajeev John and his move to UCLA, and he explains how the rise of the internet fostered his entrepreneurial instincts. He describes his work to improve cellphone antennae and his decision to transfer to Berkeley and the origins of Alta Devices. Yablonovitch describe his current interests in circuits and chips and he shares his view on Chinas work in basic science. At the end of the interview, Yablonovitch reflects on outliving many tech companies, some of the intractable challenges of solar energy, and why Feynmans lectures remain a guiding light for his own interests.
Eli Yablonovitch is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Yablonovitch pursued graduate studies in applied physics at Harvard and completed postdoctoral research at Bell Labs. He also conducted research at Exxon and was previously on faculty at UCLA before moving to Berkeley.
Platzman, P. M.
Stairs, D. G.
Teller, Edward, 1908-2003
Tinkham, M.
Unruh, W. G.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Harvard University.
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
Electrical engineering
Nonlinear optics
Photonic crystals
Semiconductor lasers
Semiconductors
Solar energy
Transistors
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Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA