Advanced Semiconductors

Professor Gianluca Setti joined KAUST in 2022 from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where he served as a Professor of Electronics for Signal and Data Processing in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET). He also served as the Rector’s Delegate on Research Quality Evaluation.

He received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science ('97) from the University of Bologna, Italy. From 1997 to 2017, he was an assistant, associate and full professor of Circuit Theory and Analog Electronics at the University of Ferrara, Italy. Dr. Setti is the first serving non-US Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship journal of the Institute, a role he has held since 2019. He has also held the IEEE Vice Presidency for Publication Services and Products for two terms. During this period, he ensured ethics in using bibliometric indicators for evaluating the impact of individual scientists' research. Additionally, he served on IEEE's board of directors, where he addressed the impact of open access mandates on IEEE members.

He received the 1998 Caianiello Prize for the best Italian Ph.D. thesis on neural networks. He also received the 2013 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Meritorious Service Award and was an IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer in 2004–2005 and 2015–2016. In addition to publishing circa 320 scientific articles in journals and conference proceedings, as well as four books, he has received best paper awards in three different IEEE Transactions and six best paper awards or nominations at major conferences, including the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems and the Design, Automation and Test in Europe.

The nature of Setti's research interests and approaches is multidisciplinary: they include nonlinear circuits, statistical signal processing, electromagnetic compatibility, compressive sensing, biomedical circuits and systems, power electronics, design and implementation of IoT nodes, as well as machine learning techniques for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

Professor Xiaohang Li has extensive research experience in III-nitride and III-oxide (ultra)wide bandgap semiconductors. Prior to KAUST, Li received his Bachelor degree in Applied Physics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University, U.S., and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, U.S.

Since joining KAUST, Li has advised more than 100 students, and led his Advanced Semiconductor Laboratory (ASL) in making many important and pioneering contributions to semiconductor research. Prof Li and his ASL team focus on the fundamental and applied research of ultrawide and wide-bandgap semiconductor materials, devices, physics and hardware. The ASL team aims to leverage these technologies to revolutionize the energy, communications, and health industries crucial for the sustainability of human society.

Professor Li has extensive research experience in III-nitride and III-oxide (ultra)wide bandgap semiconductors. He focuses his interdisciplinary research activities on investigating the growth, simulation, fabrication and characterization of III-nitride structures for next-generation devices. Devices of particular interest include LEDs, lasers, transistors and next-generation CMOS ICs.

Boon S. Ooi (FNAI, FIEEE, FOSA, FSPIE and FInstP) is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at KAUST. He was the Director of the KACST-Technology Innovation Center at KAUST from 2012 to 2020.

His research interests include high-speed optoelectronics and optical wireless communications. To date, he has trained 38 Ph.D. students and 17 postdoctoral fellows and placed them in top positions in academia, industry and government all over the world.

He is an inventor of 41 issued US Patents and the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2024 Sang Soo Lee Award from the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the Optical Society of Korea (OSK); the Khalifa International Award (UAE, 2023); the International Date Palm Innovation Prize (Saudi Arabia, 2022); and the PIFI Distinguished Scientist Award (CAS-China, 2021); as well as many paper awards.

Professor Ooi has served as Associate Editor of the Optics Express, Senior Editor of the IEEE Photonics Journal and Chair/Co-Chair/TPC of OFC, CLEO, IPC, ISLC, and IEDM. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

Professor Ooi is currently serving, or has previously served, on several prestigious committees, including the IEEE Fellow Committee, the SPIE Fellow Selection Committee and the IEEE Women in Photonics Award Committee.

Professor Ooi's recent research focuses on high-speed optoelectronics, optical wireless communications, and distributed optical sensors.

Kazuhiro Ohkawa is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program and the principal investigator of the Energy Conversion Devices and Materials (ECO Devices) Laboratory at KAUST.

Before joining the University, he was a senior research member at Panasonic Ltd, a professor of Physics at the University of Bremen, Germany and a professor of Applied Physics at Tokyo University of Science, Japan.

Professor Ohkawa invented nitrogen-plasma doping for ZnSe and their blue-green lasers and LEDs. The nitrogen-plasma source is now a standard nitride molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technology. He later became involved in the metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) growth of GaN, where he developed world-record deep-red indium gallium nitride (InGaN) LEDs based on the original MOVPE technique. His nitride MOVPE simulations have contributed to industries worldwide that produce InGaN LEDs, lasers and AlGaN electronics. Additionally, he invented nitride photocatalysts, which are instrumental in solar hydrogen production and artificial photosynthesis.

He has received numerous honors and recognitions for his contributions to optoelectronics, including being named an honorary professor (lifelong) at the University of Bremen, Germany; visiting professor at Mie University, Japan; guest professor at Xiamen University, China; and visiting professor (lifelong) at Tianjin University of Technology and Education, China. He is a fellow of the Japan Society of Applied Physics. Approximately 20 companies have sought his consulting expertise in these research areas.

His research has led to over 200 scientific publications, 28 granted US and Japanese patents and more than 70 invited talks.

Professor Ohkawa’s research at KAUST focuses on applying energy-conversion phenomena towards a more sustainable future. The highly regarded researcher’s contributions to applied physics and optoelectronics have resulted in his technologies being adopted by many companies and institutions worldwide.

Three notable contributions include the first doping technologies for II-VI compounds to realize n- and p-types. Notably, the nitrogen plasma source for the p-type has become the standard technology for molecular-beam epitaxy growth of nitride semiconductors. The second is MOCVD technology for nitride semiconductors. The technology has developed InGaN-based RGB full-color LEDs and made it possible to study MOCVD reactors scientifically. The third is the invention of a nitride photocatalyst for water splitting and artificial photosynthesis.

Ohkawa is also the principal investigator of the ECO Devices Laboratory. The lab’s research topics are not only monolithic RGB micro-LEDs but also applications of those micro-LEDs for high-speed visible light communications (so-called "Li-Fi") and vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). RGB VCSELs will enable ultimate laser-based head-mounted displays.

Atif Shamim received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Carleton University, Canada, in 2004 and 2009, respectively. He was an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholar at Carleton University from 2007 to 2009 and an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow from 2009 to 2010 at the Royal Military College Canada and KAUST.

In 2006, he joined the VTT Micro-Modules Research Center (Oulu, Finland) as an invited researcher. In August 2010, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program at KAUST, where he is currently a full professor, chair of the ECE Program, and principal investigator of the IMPACTS Lab.

His research work has earned numerous awards, including Best Paper Awards at IEEE ICMAC 2021, IEEE IMS 2016, IEEE MECAP 2016, and IEEE EuWiT 2008. He also received first prize in the IEEE IMS 2019 3MT Competition, the IEEE AP-S Design Competition 2022, and second prize in the IEEE IMS Design Competition 2024. Additionally, he was recognized with finalist or honorable mention awards in several prestigious competitions, including the IEEE AP-S Design Competition 2020 and the R.W.P. King Prize for journal papers in IEEE TAP 2017 and 2020. He has been selected as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE AP-S (2022–2024).

In addition to his research accolades, Professor Shamim’s work has been recognized for its broader impact across innovation, industry and entrepreneurship. He received the King’s Prize for the Best Innovation of the Year (2018) for his work on sensors for the oil industry. In 2008, he was honored with the Ottawa Centre of Research Innovation (OCRI) Researcher of the Year Award in Canada. His innovative Wireless Dosimeter earned the ITAC SMC Award at the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation TEXPO in 2007. He has also won several business-related honors, including first prize in Canada’s National Business Plan Competition and the OCRI Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010.

Professor Shamim has been actively involved in contributing to the IEEE community through various technical, editorial, and leadership roles. He is a Fellow of IEEE and founded the first IEEE AP/MTT chapter in Saudi Arabia (2013). He served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (2013–2019), as a Guest Editor for an IEEE AWPL Special Issue (2019), and as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (2020–2024). He has also participated in several IEEE Technical Committees, including those on Antenna Measurements (AP-S), Microwave Controls (MTT-S 13), and Additive Manufacturing (CRFID). 

He currently chairs the IEEE AP-S Technical Committee on Wireless Communication and serves as Vice Chair of the IEEE AP-S MGA Committee.

Professor Shamim's research focuses on innovative antenna designs and their integration strategies with circuits and sensors for flexible and wearable wireless sensing systems through a combination of CMOS and additive manufacturing technologies. Shamim is particularly interested in developing wearable wireless sensor systems to measure physiological parameters in real time.

Specific research interests include:

• Antenna-on-Chip (AoC) design, integration and efficiency enhancement strategies
• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS)
  Additive manufacturing (Inkjet, Screen, and 3D printing)
• Wearable and disposable wireless sensors realized through printing technologies
• Mechanically flexible RF electronics and sensing systems
• Reconfigurable microwave components (magnetically controlled)
• Phase Change Materials (PCM) for low cost RF and mm-Wave switching applications
• Terahertz plasmonics antennas and their characterization techniques
   

Professor Husam Alshareef is the Chair of the KAUST Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies (CREST) and the Principal Investigator of the KAUST Functional Nanomaterials & Devices Laboratory, with research interests in the development of nanoscale materials for energy applications. Alshareef’s work focuses on synthesizing advanced nanomaterials and translating them into practical energy solutions, contributing significantly to innovations in renewable energy and storage technologies.

Husam is the author of 600 journal publications and holds 80 issued patents. With over 62,000 citations and an h-index of 134 (Google Scholar), he was recognized for the fifth consecutive year by the Web of Science and Clarivate Analytics as a highly cited researcher in material science, placing him in the top 1% of worldwide researchers in terms of research output.

Professor Alshareef is a Fellow of several prestigious organizations, including the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, 2024), the U.S. National Academy of Inventors (2022), the UK Institute of Physics (IoP, 2022), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining (2021). These accolades reflect Husam’s extensive contributions to energy storage and materials science, positioning him as a leader in the field.

Professor Alshareef's research focuses on developing nanomaterials for energy storage and electronic applications. His research efforts have recently centered on creating new battery chemistries for harsh environments, and batteries with higher energy density, lower cost, and better safety.  

Yating Wan is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Her expertise lies in silicon photonics, with a pronounced focus on the integration of on-chip light sources. She pursued her Ph.D. at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) under Professor Kei May Lau's guidance, followed by an enriching six-year postdoctoral stint with Professor John Bowers at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

At the heart of Dr. Wan's research is a vision to revolutionize silicon photonics, emphasizing on-chip light source integration. These innovations find applications in diverse arenas, such as data communication, optical computing and quantum information processing. Her dedication is mirrored in her extensive publication record: over 60 peer-reviewed papers. She has notably taken the lead in 24 journals as the first author and six as the corresponding author, further supplemented by her 12 first-author conference papers, journal covers, a post-deadline conference paper and a book chapter.

Outside of her immediate research spectrum, Dr. Wan has been a proactive contributor to the broader academic community. She has functioned as the Manager & Column Editor for the LSA Editorial Office in Thuwal and extended her editorial expertise to APL Photonics, eLight, and the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics as an Associate Editor.

Furthermore, her acumen has been instrumental in her roles as an Associate Guest Editor for JSTQE and a Committee Member for marquee events like 2022 & 2023 CLEO and IPR. In addition, she has been a referee for a myriad of prestigious journals, spanning IEEE, OSA, and the Nature Publishing Group more than 100 times.

Her pioneering endeavors, notably integrating long-wavelength quantum dot devices on silicon, have earned her widespread acclaim. With a Google Scholar citation count of 2,740 and a h-index of 30, her accolades include the 2016-17 School of Engineering PhD Research Excellence Award in HKUST; the 2021 CLEO Tingye Li Innovation Prize; a 2022 Rising Stars of Light winner; a 2023 Optica Ambassador; the 2018 PIERS Young Scientist Award; inclusion in the "2018 Rising Stars Women in Engineering Asia" list; the "2020 Rising Stars in EECS;" and the 2021 OGC Best Young Scientist Award.

An expert in silicon photonics, Dr. Wan specializes in on-chip light source integration. Her research extends to data communication, optical computing and quantum information processing.

She is renowned for integrating long-wavelength quantum dot devices on silicon.

Osman M. Bakr is a professor in the Material Science and Engineering program at KAUST, where he has been a faculty member since 2010. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics at Harvard University and held research assistant positions in the Supramolecular Nanomaterials Group and Advanced Inorganic Materials Group at MIT.

He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Applied Physics from Harvard University and a B.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. Throughout his academic journey, Bakr has made significant contributions to the field of nanomaterials, and in 2008, he was awarded the King Abdullah Scholar Award at KAUST.

Professor Bakr's research interests are concerned with the physics and chemistry of hybrid materials. His group studies the synthesis and assembly of organic–inorganic hybrid materials and nanomaterials of novel optical and electronic properties. The purpose of these studies is to fabricate advanced material building blocks for solar cells and optoelectronic devices.

Nazek El-Atab is an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the principal investigator of the Smart, Advanced Memory Devices and Applications (SAMA) Lab. El-Atab joined the University in October 2017, having obtained her B.Sc. in computer and communications engineering in 2012 from Hariri Canadian University, Lebanon, and her M.Sc. in microsystems engineering in 2014 and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary engineering in 2017 from the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, UAE, under a cooperative program with MIT, and funded by the US Office of Naval Research.
 
At KAUST, El-Atab has worked on several high-impact research projects focusing on designing and fabricating futuristic electronics. Her current research interest focuses on the design and development of smart multifunctional devices including in-memory sensing and computing, 4D printing of actuators with self-sensing capability, among others.
 
El-Atab is a Senior IEEE Member and currently serves as the Chair of the Western Saudi Arabia IEEE Electron Device Society Chapter. She is an IEEE Electron Devices Society Distinguished Lecturer. She is an associate editor-in-chief at Applied Nanoscience (Springer Nature) and associate editor at the Nano Select by Wiley and Microelectronics Engineering by Elsevier. She has published over 100 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings, authored two book chapters, two books and holds seven filed U.S. patents.
 
El-Atab has received several significant awards for her research, including the 2015 For Women in Science Middle East Fellowship by L’Oreal-UNESCO, the 2017 International Rising Talents Award by L’Oreal-UNESCO, and was portrayed among the 2019 “Remarkable Women in Technology” by UNESCO. Prof. El-Atab was also selected to participate in the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, was selected among the 2020 UC Berkeley EECS Rising Stars, among the 10 Innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review Arabia in 2020, among the V60 Women in Sustainability by BCG, and as a “NEOM Changemaker” in 2021. 
 
Her research has been extensively covered in various international publications, including IEEE Spectrum, National Geographic, BBC, MIT Technology Review, and Sky News Arabia.

Professor El-Atab’s current research focuses on designing and developing innovative smart memory electronic devices for futuristic in-memory sensing and computing applications. El-Atab and her team aim to enhance an increasingly digitized world for emerging applications like artificial intelligence, IoT and augmented reality.

Derya Baran is an associate professor of Material Science and Engineering in the Organic/Hybrid Materials for Energy Applications (OMEGA) Lab in the Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). She is also affiliated with the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program in the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division.

Baran’s academic journey includes roles such as Research Associate at Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany, in 2016, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Plastic Electronics, Imperial College London, UK, in 2015. She earned her Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany, in 2014, and holds an M.Sc. in Chemistry from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2010, and a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the same institution in 2008.

Professor Baran aims to expand the applications of solution-processable organic/hybrid semiconductors and to explore their limits in organic/hybrid thermoelectric devices and bio-electronics in the future.

Professor Baran's research interests lie in the area of solution-processable organic/hybrid soft materials for electronic devices. Such soft semiconductor materials possess a viable platform for printed, large area, stretchable and wearable electronics that can be used as solar cells, smart windows, OFETs, thermoelectrics, sensors and bio-electronics.

​Professor Baran is particularly interested in interface engineering for organic/hybrid solar cells, transparent solar cells for building integrated photovoltaics and stability/degradation studies for long lifetime organic solar cells. She has led projects on i) conjugated polymers for electrochromic devices; ii) non-fullerene acceptors for organic solar cells; iii) multi-component and multi-layered solar cell devices; iv) understanding the correlation between recombination and nano-morphology in solution-processed solar cells.

Professor Salama received his B.S. (Hons.) degree from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1997. He obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, U.S., in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

The principal investigator of the KAUST Sensors Lab, Salama joined the University in 2009. From 2009 to 2011, he served as the founding program chair for Electrical Engineering at KAUST. Before joining KAUST, he worked as an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, U.S., from 2005 to 2009.

Dr. Salama—a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—has authored 360 articles and holds 50 patents on low-power mixed-signal circuits for intelligent, fully integrated sensors and nonlinear electronics, particularly memristor devices.

His work on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors for molecular detection has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He is also the co-founder of Ultrawave Labs, a biomedical imaging company.

Salama received the Stanford-Berkeley Innovators Challenge Award in Biological Science.

Professor Salama’s research interests cover various interdisciplinary aspects of electronic circuit design and semiconductor fabrication. He is actively engaged in developing devices, circuits, systems and algorithms to enable inexpensive analytical platforms for a variety of industrial, environmental and biomedical applications.

Salama’s most recent research has focused on developing neuromorphic circuits for brain emulation.

Suhaib Fahmy is associate professor of Computer Science and the principal investigator of the KAUST Accelerated Connected Computing Laboratory (ACCL).

Professor Fahmy graduated from Imperial College London with an M.Eng. in Information Systems Engineering in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2008. Following his Ph.D., he joined Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, as a postdoctoral research fellow and later worked as a visiting research engineer at Xilinx Research Labs Ireland, focusing on reconfigurable computing systems.

He was an assistant professor of Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where his team led early efforts to virtualize FPGAs for cloud computing, as well as pioneering work on efficient mapping of circuits to FPGA primitives.

In 2015, he returned to the UK, joining the University of Warwick as associate professor, then Reader in Computer Engineering. While at Warwick, he led the Connected Systems Research Group and the Adaptive Reconfigurable Computing Lab and launched the joint Computer Systems Engineering degree program. He was also appointed a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.

He has received numerous notable accolades, including the IEEE Conference on Field Programmable Technology (FPT) Best Paper Award in 2012, IBM Faculty Awards in 2013 and 2017, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collaborative Development Award in 2013, the International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL) Community Award in 2016, the ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems Best Paper Award in 2019, and the IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference Best Paper Award in 2021.

In 2023, he was awarded the KAUST Distinguished Teaching Award for his exceptional contributions to the classroom instruction mission of the University.

Professor Fahmy and his team at the ACCL are currently investigating a variety of approaches to hardware acceleration and how connected computing can enable more efficient, performant and secure systems.

His group focuses on overcoming the inherent latency and inefficiency of existing computing abstractions. To achieve this goal, they develop connected accelerator architectures that consider connectivity from the outset alongside specialized accelerator architectures to support more challenging applications.