Honorary degree for Prof. Shuji Nakamura

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Prof. Shuji Nakamura, a Nobel Prize winner for the invention of blue LEDs, is a new Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Warsaw.

 

Prof. Shuji Nakamura comes from Japan. In 2014, together with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”. Prof. Shuji Nakamura works at the University of California at Santa Barbara in the United States. He currently holds more than 200 US patents, over 300 Japanese patents and has published more than 550 papers in his field.

 

On 10th May Professor Shuji Nakamura received a honoris causa degree of the University of Warsaw.

 

– The doctorate honoris causa of the University of Warsaw, is a token of our recognition and gratitude for Prof. Nakamura’s work and for his numerous contributions to our discipline made over the years. His inventions are far-reaching: from physic, information and computation to energy and the environment, to health care and life sciences. The LED lamps hold great promise for increasing the quality of life for billion people around the globe who lack access to electricity grids. Therefore Prof. Nakamura’s outstanding achievements teach us another important lesson – that curiosity – motivated and essentially basic research is capable of making important humanitarian contribution to our world – said Prof. Dariusz Wasik, Dean of the Faculty of Physics of the UW, during the ceremony.

 

Prof. Shuji Nakamura is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the LED Pioneer Award (2012), the Harvey Award (2009), the Czochralski Award (2007), the Millennium Technology Prize (2006). He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2003.

 

– Although the University of Warsaw research group has never cooperated directly with our distinguished guest, it is a great satisfaction to us that in his numerous papers related to the basic properties of GaN, Shuji Nakamura used our results as the standard to which he and his colleagues compared their results – said Prof. Roman Stępniewski during the laudatory speech.

 

On 11th May Prof. Shuji Nakamura will also deliver a lecture at the University of Warsaw entitled “Invention of high efficient blue LEDs and future solid state lighting”.

 

The video from the ceremony