Fred Kish

Fred A. Kish, received his B.S., M.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 over $2B in revenue to date. 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 first commercial fully integrated system-on-a-chip for optical communications. The large-scale InP PICs are at the core of Infinera’s optical network products and have been the enabling technology behind over $4B in PIC-based networking product sales. He served as Senior Vice President of the Optical Integrated Circuit Group at Infinera prior to joining NC State as the Director of the NC State Nanofabrication Facility.

Dr. Kish is a Fellow of the OSA and IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His awards include the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the IEEE LEOS Engineering Achievement Award, the OSA Adolph Lomb Award, and the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors Young Scientist Award. He has co-authored over 125 U.S. patents, over 150 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, and 4 book chapters on optoelectronic devices and materials.