Fred Kish Receives IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award

Congratulations to Fred Kish for receiving the IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award which is given to honor an individual for outstanding technical contributions to quantum electronics, either in fundamentals or applications, or both!

The IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award is given to honor an individual (or group of individuals) for outstanding technical contributions to quantum electronics, either in fundamentals or applications, or both. The Award may be for a single contribution or for a distinguished series of contributions over a long period of time. The Award consists of an honorarium of $4000 and a medal. The presentation is made at the IEEE Photonics Conference.

2022 Honoree

Fred A. Kish
For pioneering contributions to the invention, development, and commercialization of photonic integrated circuits.

Fred A. Kish received his Bachelor’s Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988, 1989, and 1992, respectively. His Ph.D. research work (under Nick Holonyak, Jr.) is part of the core Al-bearing III-V native-oxide technology that has enabled the development of the highest performance VCSELs and has been licensed to VCSEL manufacturers throughout the world.

From 1992-1999, he was at Hewlett-Packard where he co-invented and led the commercialization of the highest performance (efficiency) red-orange-yellow visible LEDs produced at the time (wafer-bonded transparent-substrate AlGaInP LEDs). The efficiencies of these devices exceeded those of incandescent and halogen lamps with products based on this technology resulting in multi-billion dollars in revenue. From 1999-2001, he was with Agilent Technologies as the III-V Department Manager.

In 2001, he joined Infinera Corporation where he co-invented and led the effort to research, develop, and commercialize the first practical (commercially deployed) large-scale PICs and the first commercial fully integrated system-on-a-chip for optical communications. The system-on-a-chip InP PICs are at the core of Infinera’s optical network products and have been the enabling technology behind over $5B in PIC-based networking product sales. He served as Senior Vice President of the Optical Integrated Circuit Group wherein he led and co-invented many firsts in photonic integrated circuit technology and products for optical communications to improve the capacity of transmitter and receiver modules from10 Gb/s to 1.6 Tb/s.

In 2019, Kish joined NC State University as the M.C. Dean Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the NC State Nanofabrication Facility. Dr. Kish is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the IEEE and Optica (formerly OSA). His awards include the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the IEEE LEOS Engineering Achievement Award, the OSA Adolph Lomb Award, the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors Young Scientist Award, and the Technology Review 100 Award. He has co-authored over 135 U.S. patents, over 170 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, and 5 book chapters on optoelectronic devices and materials.

Congratulation to Kish for his distinguished recognition!