OT Sam
And who said an "Ivy Leaguer" couldn't be friends with a Berkeley/Stanford type? More on Prof Hu. I remember being just a tad bit upset that I was paying good money to go to UC (yeah, it was a cheap school but it was expensive for me at the time) and they gave me a professor lacking English skills I had come to expect since they required me to take remedial English there... anyway, after a few lectures, I didn't mind at all. he was a great teacher and made up for it. I was happy to read the paper and see that he hasn't wasted much time perfecting English grammar. :)
I only hope Professors Lewis and Hu are as successful as deans as they were as professors!
Indeed! I used to go the the IEDM annual conferences "International Electron Device Meeting" and Prof Hu's grad students were ALWAY well represented and usually gave some of the top (ok, I'm biased) papers. I would hope his teaching skills would then be applied to teaching the other professors how to teach and lead... which is some of the job of a good dean. One reason Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. stay on top is they have a formula that works and I think promoting good people has to be part of it.
As to organic semiconductors, I am pretty much out of the loop and haven't attended an IEDM meeting in 10 years or so... but I read a bit here and there due to my interest and professional work in photon detection. I've read that "they" are working on semiconductors that can be applied with HP's injet technology so you basically print them onto sheets. This would give us the 10x cost reduction needed to make solar cells if "they" can get the reliability to work. You can also have a cell phone size pocket PC with say P2 type speed that has a full sized display that you can rollup or keep in a paper file folder... rather than $300 for a 14" color display, you might pay $30 and you "renew" them when they wear out... sacrifice some reliability for light weight and low cost... it breaks, you just buy another and still come out ahead... but this is still blue sky.
I've heard branstormers say this sort of technology COULD be disruptive in that many parts made on AMAT equipment might go to inkjet... or something similar. Of course, for pure power and speed, it is hard to beat Si or SiGe so AMAT won't go away.
have a good weekend!
Kirk |
