Professor Supratik Guha has recently been selected as a 2018 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow (VBVF), as announced by the Department of Defense (Dod). He joins a cohort of 45 current Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows, who are sponsored by the DoD to conduct foundational research in core science and engineering disciplines that underpin future DoD capabilities.
Guha is a materials scientist whose research is on new semiconductors and oxide materials and devices for new computing architectures, cyberphysical sensing systems, and energy conversion technologies. He is particularly interested in the discovery of thin film materials and novel devices that can be used for ultra-low power non Boolean computing and sensing; and believes in a top down, system level perspective for the need for specific materials and devices.
Guha pioneered the materials research that led to IBM’s high-k dielectric metal gate transistor technology, one of the most significant developments in silicon CMOS technology in decades. The processor chips in over 50 percent of smart phones and tablets sold today use nanoscale dielectrics and processes developed by Guha. He has also worked extensively on earth abundant thin film photovoltaics, and his research group has been responsible for demonstrating the highest efficiency vacuum deposited Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 solar cells, and the first tandem chalcogenide/perovskite solar cells to date. More recently his activities have included sensor-based analytics for geo-spatial applications such as high-resolution agriculture and the tracking of pollutants in rivers. As a manager at IBM he has had significant experience developing inter-company joint R&D alliances and has initiated or expanded several successful programs such as silicon photonics, quantum computing, carbon electronics, photovoltaics, and sensor based analytics.
The VBFF commemorates Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII. Following the example set by Dr. Bush, DoD invests in basic research to probe the limits of today's technologies and discover new phenomena and know-how that ultimately leads to future technologies and helps prevent capability surprise. These investments have led to broad and game-changing capabilities such as the global positioning satellite (GPS) system, magnetic random access memory (MRAM), and stealth technology, to name a few.