Summit Speaker: James Speck
Professor and Chair, Materials Department
University of California Santa Barbara
James S. Speck is Professor and Chair of the Materials Department at the University of California Santa Barbara. He received his B.S.M.E. degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1983 and his S.M. and Sc.D. in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and 1989, respectively. At UCSB, his early work focused on epitaxial oxide films on semiconductors, ferroelectric thin films, and strain relaxation in highly misfitting epitaxial systems. He has worked extensively on the materials science of GaN and related alloys. Major aspects of his work on nitrides include elucidating basic growth modes and defect generation, the development of MBE growth of GaN, and the development of nonpolar and semipolar GaN. Speck received the Quantum Device Award from the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors in 2007, he was named an inaugural MRS Fellow in 2008, and received the JJAP Best Paper Award in 2008.