Alum named Head of School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide

University of Wisconsin-Madison electrical and computer engineering alumnus Nelson Tansu was recently named the new Head of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Professor in Quantum Electronics at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.

Tansu came to UW-Madison from Indonesia to begin his studies in 1995. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1998 and a PhD from the University in 2003 working with Professor Luke J. Mawst before accepting a position at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where he is currently the Director of the Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics and the Daniel E. ’39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair Professor.

Tansu’s research focuses on semiconductor materials and devices, including photonics, quantum materials and nanoelectronics. He has 18 patents, has authored more than 155 journals and 310 conference publications, and has been cited more than 8,600 times. He was elected as a Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors in 2016 and is the Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal Photonics.

Tansu’s life story was also published in a children’s book, Nelson, the Boy Who Loved to Read. Tansu will begin his new position in January, 2021.