Beginning with the arrival of Professor Herbert Kroemer in the late 1970s, UCSB made a commitment to focus on III-V materials—semiconductor crystals which have become ubiquitous in solid-state lasers and LEDs—and devices. Professor James Merz from Bell Labs soon joined the effort with work on photonic materials and devices. With the arrival of Dean Robert Mehrabian in 1983, the commitment to materials and the College of Engineering in general grew dramatically.

Electronic system security, trust and reliability has become an increasingly critical area of concern for modern society. Secure hardware systems, platforms, as well as supply chains are critical to industry and government sectors such as national defense, healthcare, transportation, and financial. Traditionally, authenticity and integrity of data has been protected with various security protocol at the software level with the underlying hardware assumed to be secure, and reliable. This assumption however is no longer true with an increasing number of attacks reported on the hardware.

While the German word “Energiewende” is not yet quite as well-known globally as the widely used “kindergarten”, it has made it into the English language as a short description for a program of energy transition towards a low-carbon sustainable energy supply based on – to a large degree – renewable energy sources as well as increased energy efficiency.

Ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a Nature Research Journal editor when they are interpreting referee reports and making decisions on your paper, if cover letters are really import, or how to effectively ‘appeal’? In this interactive talk, the editorial process at Nature Research Journals will be demystified, with emphasis on Nature Photonics. We will discuss what is important to say in cover letters, how to appeal (and how not to appeal), and other types of opportunities for getting published (like Reviews & Commentary, etc.).

Florence Miskolczi stated in a series of four publications that there can be no Earth greenhouse gas warming because water vapor from the oceans will reconfigure to compensate for added anthropogenic gases.  Yet satellite radiometer data shows 0.076 ±..012°C/decade warming in the Southern Hemisphere Troposphere and .21±.0.014°C/decade in the Northern Hemisphere troposphere for the years 1979-2007 for example. This factor of 2.7 ratio exists even though NOAA CO2 data show only a 5 ppm drop (~1 %) between Burrow and the South Pole.

At UCSB IEE in October 2015, I characterized the stranded power opportunity and the ideas behind ZCCloud. Now, scientific studies show ZCCloud is economically viable, enabling TCO-competitive systems with higher capability, higher throughput (utility), and zero-carbon footprint. Cloud computing is the world's fastest growing consumer of electricity and has a rapidly growing carbon-footprint.

Structure, surface chemistry, and energetic disorder can dramatically affect excited state dynamics in low-dimensional systems. Using a combination of ultrafast laser spectroscopy, time-resolved optical microscopy, and kinetic modeling, I will show how these effects manifest in assemblies of colloidal quantum dots (QD) and lead halide perovskites, which are promising components of next-generation photovoltaic and lighting technologies.

Petroleum provides about 35% of total primary energy supply and meets about 95% of our transportation energy needs. Some argue that this dominance is short lived due to rapid expansion of electric vehicles, while others argue for a continued role for petroleum well into this century. While visions for the future use of oil vary widely, most model projections suggest that humanity will consume more than 1 trillion barrels of oil between now and the end of the century.  Where will this oil come from? What are the impacts of producing, refining, and consuming this oil?

Understanding, and then replicating, the computing paradigm(s) used in the brain’s neocortex is a computer architecture research problem that is of unquestionable practical and scientific importance, but one that will require an unconventional approach. Unconventional because it begins with the end product  ̶a biological computing engine possessing amazing capabilities and operating efficiencies  ̶and then tries to reconstruct, or reverse-architect, the underlying computational paradigm(s). When considered as a whole, the task is daunting.

The Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE) at the University of  California, Santa Barbara would like to invite you to attend an Emerging Technologies Review,  Friday May 27th.  This review will cover new developments in areas of energy and energy efficiency. Recent progress of IEE industrial partners and other local companies  will be highlighted. Advances in energy generation and grid storage will be discussed, along with energy efficiency improvements in areas such as irrigation,  motors, power electronics, and photonics.