James S. Speck is a Professor in 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 with Umesh Mishra 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. In 2009 he received became an APS Fellow. In 2010 he received the IEEE Photonics Society Aron Kressel Award with Steve DenBaars for their work on nonpolar and semipolar GaN-based materials and devices.
In 2007, Speck and his longtime collaborators Steve DenBaars and Shuji Nakamura founded Santa Barbara-based start-up companies Kaai and Soraa to commercialize their work on nonpolar and semipolar nitrides. In 2016 he was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Speck has over 750 publications in the referred archival literature.
Read more on Dr. Speck's UC-SB homepage.
Education
- Sc.D. in Materials Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- S.M. in Metallurgy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- B.Sc.Eng., University of Michigan
