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C.J. Chang-Hasnain, Laser Engineering Luminary,
to Receive 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award
Pioneering Contributions Have Led to Widespread Deployment of
Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers
PISCATAWAY, N.J., 22 February 2011 – C.J. Chang-Hasnain, an engineer whose
groundbreaking contributions to the physics and design of Vertical Cavity Surface
Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) have shaped their use in modern technology, is being
honored by IEEE with the 2011 IEEE David Sarnoff Award. IEEE is the world’s largest
professional association advancing technology.
The award, sponsored by Sarnoff Corporation, recognizes Chang-Hasnain for
pioneering contributions to VCSEL arrays and tunable VCSELs. The award will be
presented on 8 March 2011 at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and
Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Los Angeles, Calif.
Chang-Hasnain’s seminal contributions have been instrumental in establishing
VCSELs as the dominant technology for multimode fiber applications. And her work
has had a profound influence on commercial tunable, high-speed and laser array
designs. VCSELs comprise more than 75% of today’s laser market, dominating the
high-volume, low-cost and short-distance laser sectors. They can be turned on and
off very fast, at billions of times per second, but yet manufactured at very low cost in
wafer-scale. VCSELs are now used in applications ranging from Ethernet data
networks to computer mice to laser printers. Most local area networks and largescale data centers supporting Internet traffic use VCSELs. Active optical cables that
link home high-definition television components are a growing consumer application
of VCSELs.
Chang-Hasnain’s invention and integration of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems
(MEMS) and photonic systems created a new class of optoelectronic devices. ChangHasnain explained the modal structure of VCSELs and demonstrated the first planar
structure, which was commercialized. Her demonstration of the first gigabyte-persecond multimode VCSEL transmission using a multimode optical fiber became the
prototype of today’s Ethernet technology. She was the first to demonstrate that
VCSEL arrays can be designed to have a precise wavelength variation to form a 140wavelength array. She also showed that VCSELs can be used for wavelength-division
multiplexing applications.
Chang-Hasnain demonstrated the first realizable tunable VCSEL structure with a wide
tuning range. Tunable lasers allow the wavelength to be altered in a controlled
manner. She later invented a high-contrast grating that led to a tunable laser with a
40x improvement in speed. Overall, her developments concerning wavelengthengineered VCSELs have resulted in tunable lasers that accomplish both a wide
range and continuous tuning simultaneously.
An IEEE Fellow Chang-Hasnain is a National Security Science and Engineering
Faculty Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, an Honorary Member of A.F. loffe Institute
(Russia) and a Chang-Jiang Scholar at Tsinghua University, China. She holds 37
patents and has published over 400 papers. Prof. Chang-Hasnain has been the
editor-in-chief of the Journal of Lightwave Technology since 2007. Her awards
include the IEEE Photonics Society’s William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award,
the Optical Society of America’s Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, and the Humboldt
Research Award . She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California,
Davis, and master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California,
Berkeley, all in electrical engineering and computer science. She is currently the John
R. Whinnery Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the
University of California, Berkeley.
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