John Bowers
Institute Role
Director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency; Head of Electronics & Photonics Solutions Group; Member of Production & Storage
Solutions Group
Role in Affiliated Centers
Director of the Center for Energy Efficient Materials and the
Silicon Photonics Center; Member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Wide
Bandgap Semiconductors and the Solid-State Lighting & Energy Center
Research
John Bowers is interested in energy efficiency and the development
of novel low power optoelectronic devices for the next generation of optical networks.
His research interests include silicon photonics and integrated circuits, fiber
optic networks, thermoelectrics, high efficiency solar cells, and optical
switching. Optical switches have the potential to reduce the energy required to switch data by factor of 10,000. Silicon photonics have the potential to reduce the energy require to transmit data on and off chips by a factor of ten or more. A recent collaboration with Intel led to the
development of hybrid silicon lasers, which led to a prototype 50 Gbps high-speed optical data link, which is
integrated onto silicon.
Biography
John Bowers received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from Stanford University and worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories and
Honeywell before joining UC Santa Barbara in 1987. Currently, Bowers is a
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds
the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology. He is the founding Director of the
Institute for Energy Efficiency and a
member of the University’s Technology Management Program.
Bowers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the IEEE, the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the American Physical Society. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the OSA Holonyak Prize, the IEEE LEOS William Streifer Award and the South Coast Business and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He and coworkers received the ACE Award for Most Promising Technology for the hybrid silicon laser in 2007. He has published eight book chapters, 450 journal papers, 700 conference papers and has received 52 patents.
