UNM Professor Luke Lester Elected IEEE Fellow

Luke Lester

Luke F. Lester was recently elected to Fel­low by the IEEE (the Insti­tute of Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ics Engi­neers) and SPIE, the Soci­ety for Optics and Pho­ton­ics. The grade of Fel­low is the high­est grade of mem­ber­ship in both orga­ni­za­tions and is rec­og­nized by the tech­ni­cal com­mu­nity as a pres­ti­gious honor and an impor­tant career achievement.

Lester, Pro­fes­sor and Interim Chair in the Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing and the Micro­elec­tron­ics Endowed Chair Pro­fes­sor, was cited for con­tri­bu­tions to quan­tum dot lasers for both organizations.

“Luke’s work in quan­tum dot lasers is out­stand­ing and ele­va­tion to the grade of Fel­low by both IEEE and SPIE demon­strates the sig­nif­i­cance of his achieve­ments,” said Catalin Roman, dean of the UNM School of Engi­neer­ing. “It is par­tic­u­larly impres­sive that he has received the sta­tus of Fel­low in both orga­ni­za­tions at the same time.”

Lester’s sig­na­ture achieve­ment since join­ing UNM has been his ground-breaking inves­ti­ga­tion of semi­con­duc­tor quan­tum dot lasers, specif­i­cally using the “dots-in-a-well” (DWELL) tech­nique. The DWELL approach embeds a quan­tum dot nanos­truc­ture within a thin-film quan­tum well region to improve elec­tron cap­ture into the dot mate­r­ial. Lester was the first per­son to describe the device physics that improves the effi­ciency and reduces the thresh­old cur­rent of the DWELL laser.

This influ­en­tial work, first pub­lished in 1999 in IEEE Pho­ton­ics Tech­nol­ogy Let­ters, led to numer­ous invited lec­tures on quan­tum dot tech­nol­ogy at inter­na­tional con­fer­ences through­out the world. In recog­ni­tion of this impor­tant research, he and his co-authors received the Best Paper Award at Pho­ton­ics West 2000 in San Jose, CA. His other awards for quan­tum dot research include the 2012 Harold E. Edger­ton Award from the SPIE, the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Optics and Pho­ton­ics, in recog­ni­tion of his pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the devel­op­ment, char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and inte­gra­tion of quan­tum dot mode-locked lasers as high-speed opti­cal sources, Dr. Lester received the 2012 Harold Edger­ton Award from the SPIE.

“I feel very hon­ored to receive these dis­tinc­tions from the IEEE and SPIE and want to thank all my stu­dent advisees and col­lab­o­ra­tors who over the past twenty-five years have con­tributed to our excit­ing tech­no­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies in semi­con­duc­tor nan­otech­nol­ogy. I couldn’t have done this with­out your help and cama­raderie,” said Lester.

Media con­tact: Tamara Williams (505) 277‑5859; email: tamara@unm.edu