Adesida honored by IEEE

Ilesanmi Adesida, dean and Willett Professor in the College of Engineering, has been honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society.

Established in 1993, the Distinguished Service Award is presented annually and intended to recognize and honor outstanding service to the Electron Devices Society and its sponsored activities. Adesida has been actively involved with IEEE and EDS activities and services for more than 20 years, serving as IEEE EDS president in 2006-2007. He also has served and led many of the organization’s key committees and is currently a senior past president.

Adesida joined the Illinois faculty in 1987, and has served as the dean of the College of Engineering since May 2006. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor and director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Previously, he served as director of the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory and associate director for Education of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Compound Semiconductor Microelectronics.

After earning his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979, Adesida worked for five years in various capacities at what is now known as the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility and School of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. From 1985 to 1987, he headed the Electrical Engineering Department at Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria. 

As a nanotechnology pioneer, Adesida’s research interests include nanofabrication processes and ultra-high-speed optoelectronics. He has extensive experience in development of novel processes for wide bandgap materials, such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride. He has also worked on ultra-high-speed photodetectors and photoreceivers in various materials systems. He has organized and chaired many international conferences.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Vacuum Society (AVS), the Materials Research Society, and the Optical Society of America. On the national level, Adesida chairs the advisory committee for the Directorate of Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF), serves on the NSF Materials 2022 Committee and on the NAE committee on the National Nanotechnology Initiative. He was a co-founder of Xindium Technologies, and serves on many private and governmental advisory boards.
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