Constance J. Chang-Hasnain

Constance Chang-Hasnain is the John R. Whinnery Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and Chair of its Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. In addition she is the Director of the Center for Optoelectronic Nanostructured Semiconductor Technologies at Berkeley. She is also the cofounder, and from 1998 to 2000, the chairman and CEO of Bandwidth9 Inc., located in Fremont, California.

Ms. Chang-Hasnain received her B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from UC Davis (1982) and her M.S. (1984) and Ph.D. (1987) in electrical engineering at Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at Berkeley, she was a member of the Technical Staff in the Applied Research Division of Bellcore, in Red Band, New Jersey (1987-92), and a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford University (1992-96).

An internationally known leader in her field, Ms. Chang-Hasnain is a remarkably productive scholar, with over 550 publications to her credit. Her innovative work with vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL) and arrays, demonstrating VCSEL properties could be used to make a multiwavelength laser array; the design of tunable semiconductor lasers, which are now being developed commercially; and her researches on high-speed modulation and slow and fast light in semiconductors have earned her not only the esteem of her colleagues and many collaborators around the world, but numerous prestigious awards. Among them are the Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer Award (1992), from the Eta Kappa Nu Electrical Engineer Honor Society; NSF National Young Investigator Award (1992-94); the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society’s Distinguished Lecturer Award (1994-95); the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, from the American Society of Engineering Education (2000);, and the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, from the Optical Society of America (2007). She has also been an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (1994-95), Packard Fellow (1992-97), and Presidential Faculty Fellow (1994-97).

Ms. Chang-Hasnain is an elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the IEEE, and Institution of Electrical Engineers, as well as an honorary member of the A. F. Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is a dedicated and highly regarded teacher and mentor, invited lecturer, chair of several major international conferences, a member of the Board of Governors of IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics society and the Optical Society of America. She is also the Editor-in-chief of Journal of Lightwave Technologies.

During her Guggenheim Fellowship term, Ms. Chang-Hasnain will further her work on high-efficiency photovoltaic cells and handheld biosensors.