ECSE welcomes multiple faculty members in fall 2025:
- Boon Ooi: Future Chip Constellation Professor.
- Kanad Basu: Associate Professor
- Wenwen Zhao: Assistant Professor
- Steve Sangin Han: Lecturer
- Martin Burkhardt: Visiting Professor
Boon has been the Founding Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia since 2009. He has also served as the department chair 2010-2013 and 2018-2020, and the Director of the KACST Technology Innovation Center at KAUST from 2012-2021.
Boon is a pioneering leader in optoelectronics, photonics, and semiconductor integration. Over three decades, he has made foundational contributions in multiple areas:
1. Semiconductor Photonics Integration: His early patents on quantum well intermixing, licensed to Denselight Semiconductor and adopted by Infinera, Lumentum, Sony, and Samsung.
2. Broadband Light Sources: His groundbreaking work on superluminescent diodes (SLDs) and broadband lasers enabled high-resolution imaging and ophthalmology systems, now commercialized by Carl Zeiss Meditec.
3. Optical Wireless & Underwater Photonics: He demonstrated the world’s first Gb/s underwater wireless optical communication system, catalyzing a new field of “underwater photonics” with wide-ranging applications in defense, oceanography, and climate science.
4. Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors: His invention of DAS-DTS interrogators, commercialized through AK-Sens Ltd., has been adopted by Saudi Aramco, Cisco, and NEOM for oil well monitoring. The technology has been repurposed for early detection of red palm weevil infestations in date palm, a devastating pest across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Governments in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE are already adopting this agricultural innovation.
Boon’s research has garnered multiple international awards and prizes, including the 2024 Sang Soo Lee Award from Optica (for pioneering optoelectronics devices and systems and growing photonics community in Saudi Arabia), 2024 Technical Innovation of the Year Award (for the DAS-DTS interrogator technology), 2023 Khalifa International Award (for date palm and
agriculture innovation), and 2022 International Date Palm Innovation Technology Excellence Prize (for early detection of red palm weevil).
Kanad Basu joins us as an Associate Professor. He comes to RPI from the University of Texas at Dallas, where he has served as an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department since 2019. His research focuses on the development of reliable and secure hardware for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, as well as systems related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Kanad’s accomplishments have been recognized through numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor Award and the Jonsson School Outstanding Assistant Professor Award from UT Dallas.
Wenwen Zhao joins ECSE as an Assistant Professor. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University in 2025. Wenwen is a recipient of both the Kavli Institute at Cornell Graduate Fellowship and the Nellie Ye-Poh Lin Whetten Memorial Award. Her research interests lie in ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor electronics, RF acoustic devices, and advanced nanofabrication.
Steve Sangin Han received his BS, MS, and PhD all from University of Wiscosin, Madison, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He has had a long career in the semiconductor industry, first in Motorola (1998-2005) and later in ASML (2006-2022). Steve has a strong background in optics and lithography in semiconductor industry. There is a need to introduce photolithography in the ECSE curriculum due to the education and workforce development portion of the RPI’s chip initiative. Steve will help address this need.
Martin Burkhardt is a member of technical staff at IBM. He has extensive experience in the development of microlithography on 65nm through 5nm lithography nodes. Martin will be a Visiting Professor in ECSE, helping to strengthen our curriculum and research in lithography and semiconductor manufacturing.