Theodore D Moustakas

Dr. Moustakas is the inaugural Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics at Boston University. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1974. He held research positions at Harvard University and Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory prior to joining Boston University in 1987 as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is currently an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, of the Division of Materials Science and Engineering, and of the Physics Department at Boston University.

 

Dr. Moustakas’ research contributions cover a broad spectrum of topics in opto-electronic materials and devices, including nitride semiconductors, amorphous semiconductors, III-V compounds, chalcogenide glasses, diamond thin films and metallic multi-layers. He is the co-editor of eight books, including Gallium Nitride I (Academic Press, 1998) and Gallium Nitride II (academic Press, 1999), the author of chapters in eight books and 363 papers in technical journals (Google citations more than 19,000, h-index 70). He served as a special editor of the Journal of Electronic Materials and the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. He presented 138 invited, keynote and plenary talks in national and international conferences. He has been granted 41 U.S. patents and several in foreign countries in the fields of nitride semiconductors, amorphous silicon and diamond materials. Intellectual property that resulted from his work has been licensed to more than 40 companies, including major manufacturers and users of blue LEDs and lasers (Cree, Nichia, Philips, OSRAM, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Motorola, Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, NEC, Blackberry, Nokia etc.)..

 

Dr. Moustakas was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (1994), the Electrochemical Society (1997), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers-IEEE (2014), the Optical Society of America (2021) and the Materials Research Society (2022); he was also elected a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2012). Dr. Moustakas was granted an honorary doctoral degree from the Aristotle University in Greece (2003). He received the Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) Innovator Award in 2010 from the North America MBE Society. He received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the BU College of Engineering in 2011, and the Boston University Innovator of the Year Award in 2013. He was the recipient of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award in 2024 for his “pioneering contributions to Nitride Semiconductor materials and optical devices that helped build the foundation for blue and UV LEDs”.

Current CV