Michael Shur

For the television producer, see Michael Schur. For the political reporter, see Michael Shure.

Michael Shur (born November 13, 1942) is an Russian and American physicist, and a professor of solid state electronics and electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Background

Shur was born on November 13, 1942 in Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk, USSR. He received his master's degree in Electrical Engineering from St. Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute. In 1967 he received his PhD in physics from the A.F. Ioffe Institute in Petersburg, Russia.

Shur has held research or faculty positions at the A.F. Ioffe Institute, Wayne State University, Oakland University, Cornell University, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and the University of Minnesota. From 1989 to 1996, he was the John Money Professor at the University of Virginia, where he served as the director of the Applied Electrophysics Laboratories in 1996. He moved to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1996.

Research

Shur has led many research efforts in diverse fields related to semiconductor devices, solid-state physics, and engineering, such as plasma wave electronics, thin film transistors, laser technology, sub micrometre field effect transistors, terahertz technology, Surface Acoustic and Acousto-Optic devices. Having written over 1,000 technical publications, the Institute for Scientific Information, an organization which tracks citations, lists him as one of the most quoted researchers in his field. He has also authored, co-authored, or served as editor for 32 books. As of 2004, he holds 27 patents for a wide variety of microelectronic innovations.

Awards and honors

• in 2007 the IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award for the paper "Solid-State Lighting: Towards Superior Illumination"
• in 2007 the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award for "inspirational guidance of graduate students & development of novel teaching materials in solid-state electronics"