Pioneer Researcher in Semiconductors Jerry M. Woodall Joins Engineering Faculty at Yale University

Jerry M. Woodall, who has been a pioneer in research on semiconductor materials and devices, has joined the Yale faculty as the C. Baldwin Sawyer Professor of Electrical Engineering by vote of the Yale Corporation.

Woodall has been the Charles William Harrison Distinguished Professor of Microelectronics at Purdue University since 1993. He has been at the forefront of research on crystals that has had implications for the development of laser technology, cellular phones, remote control and data link applications, optical fiber communications and other fields. In addition, his research has led to the creation of new areas of solid-state physics, and he pioneered the “pseudomorphic” HEMT, a state-of-the-art high speed device widely used in commercial devices and circuits.

Woodall holds more than 65 U.S. patents and has written more than 275 scholarly articles and papers. His numerous honors include nearly 40 research and achievement awards from IBM, the Jack A. Morton Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Heinrich Welker Gold Medal, the American Society for Engineering Education’s General Electric Senior Research Award, the Electrochemical Society’s Edward Goodrich Acheson Founder’s Award (its highest honor) and the American Vacuum Society’s Medard Welch Founder’s Award.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Woodall earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University. He worked briefly as a staff engineer at Clevite Transistor Products in Waltham, Mass., before joining IBM Research in 1962. He became an IBM Fellow in 1985 and held that post until joining the Purdue University faculty. He is currently a consultant to IBM and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Woodall is also a fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), the Electrochemical Society (ECS), the IEEE and the American Physical Society. He is a former president of the ECS and is the current president of the AVS.