ECSE and RPI community celebrated the retirement of long time ECSE faculty Michael Shur, Ishwara Bhat, Russ Kraft, and ECSE staff Laraine Michaelidis.
A celebration luncheon was held on March 26 to honor Michael’s stellar career and tremendous contributions to RPI. He also gave a joint ECSE-Physics seminar “100 years of Field Effect Transistor: Industrial Face of Nanotechnology” later in the afternoon the same day https://ecse.rpi.edu/lectures/2025/joint-ecse-phyics-seminar-100-years-…. This talk was part of the series of celebration of the 100 years of the Field Effect Transistor (FET100) sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS). Photos from the occasion are here.
A retirement celebration reception was also held on April 25 in ECSE. Photos from the occasion are here.
Michael received his MSEE from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University in 1965 and Ph.D. in Physics from A. F. Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology in 1967. He has held faculty appointments at Wayne State University, Oakland University, University of Minnesota, and University of Virginia, before joining RPI in 1996. He served as the Acting Director of Center of Integrated Electronics (2006-2013), Director of Connection One NSF IUCRC (2004-2014), and Jefferson Science Fellow at the US Department of State (2013-2014). Michael is a renowned researcher in solid state electronics. His numerous accolades include honorary doctorates from St. Petersburg Technical University and the University of Vilnius, the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award, the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, and election as a Foreign Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, APS, ECS, and SPIE, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, OSA, IET, MRS, WIF, and AAAS. He is highly prolific, with 12 books, 42 edited volumes, 41 book chapters, over 1600 journal papers, and over 200 domestic and foreign patents. According to Google Scholar, he has almost 80,000 citations and an h-index of 123. His research has been funded by NSF, ARO, ONR, DOE, and many other agencies, national labs, and companies. Michael is a co-founder of several startups, including Sensor Electronics Technology and Electronics of the Future, where he serves as the CTO. He has current grants from ONR and DoD Microelectronics Commons. He graduated 34 PhD students and 36 MS students. Michael plans to continue active research and will transition to his new role as a senior research scientist in the department.
Ishwara received his B.Tech (EE) from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1980, MS and PhD from ECSE, RPI, in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He was a Research faculty in ECSE 1985-1991, Associate Professor in ECSE 1991-2000, and full professor in ECSE since 2000. Ishwara specializes in the epitaxial growth and characterization of various semiconductors, including II-VI, III-V, and IV-IV compounds. His research encompasses both wide bandgap semiconductors, such as GaN, SiC, and ZnSe, and narrow bandgap materials like HgCdTe and InGaSb. He has had over 70 research grants funded by federal agencies, national labs, and companies. He has supervised 22 doctoral students and 19 master's students. He has eleven book chapters and 187 journal articles. He has 4390 citations with h-index 34 according to Google Scholar.
Russ received his B.S., M. Eng., and Ph.D., degrees all from Electrical Engineering at RPI. After a stint at Mechanical Technology Inc., he returned to RPI in 1986. He initially joined the Center for Manufacturing Productivity and later became a Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Faculty member in the ECSE department. His roles included being a Research Staff member in ECSE starting in 1995, where he contributed to the VLSI design of a fast RISC processor, and served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in ECSE and the Computer Science Department, teaching courses in various areas. As a Senior Lecturer since 2019, Russ has covered courses such as VLSI Design, Real-Time Applications in Control & Communication, and Embedded Control. He also maintained and supported EDA tools for the department.