Srabanti Chowdhury is an Indian American Electrical Engineer who is an associate professor of electrical engineering at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. She is a senior

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Precourt Institute for Energy Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

. At Stanford she works on ultra-wide and

wide-bandgap semiconductor Wide-bandgap semiconductors (also known as WBG semiconductors or WBGSs) are semiconductor materials which have a larger band gap than conventional semiconductors. Conventional semiconductors like silicon and selenium have a bandgap in the range ...

s and device engineering for energy-efficient electronic devices. She serves as Director for Science Collaborations at the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

Energy Frontier Research Center ULTRA.

Early life and education

Chowdhury earned her bachelor's degree in

radiophysics Radiophysics (also modern writing radio physics) is a branch of physics focused on the theoretical and experimental study of certain kinds of radiation, its emission, propagation and interaction with matter. The term is used in the following maj ...

and

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

at the

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta, informally known as Calcutta University (), is a Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Kolkata, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate c ...

Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics. After earning her undergraduate degree, she worked in the corporate sector in

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

. She eventually decided to pursue a doctorate, and moved to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. She was a graduate student at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

, where she worked alongside

Umesh Mishra Umesh K. Mishra is a professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1990–present). In 2023, he was appointed dean of the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering. He is the CTO, co- ...

. During her doctoral research, she developed vertical

gallium nitride Gallium nitride () is a binary III/ V direct bandgap semiconductor commonly used in blue light-emitting diodes since the 1990s. The compound is a very hard material that has a Wurtzite crystal structure. Its wide band gap of 3.4 eV af ...

(GaN) devices for power conversion. She was the first to realize a current aperture vertical electron transistor, a

high voltage High voltage electricity refers to electrical potential large enough to cause injury or damage. In certain industries, ''high voltage'' refers to voltage above a certain threshold. Equipment and conductors that carry high voltage warrant sp ...

vertical power switching device based on GaN. These single crystal GaN devices achieved a record-high breakdown electric field. After earning her doctorate, she joined Transphorm, a company that looked to commercialize GaN devices.

Research and career

Chowdhury leads the WBG Lab at

. Chowdhury dedicated her early research to the creation of very low loss transistors for power conversion applications. Building upon her doctoral research, she identified and optimized fabrication processes to create GaN vertical devices. Her fabrication makes use of the interesting polarization characteristics of GaN. Reverse polarization of Aluminum Gallium Nitride/GaN heterostructure blocks current, whilst allowing very high current flow to specific regions. Her work offers hope for high power density, high efficiency electronic devices. Alongside GaN, Chowdhury has investigated diamond for passive electronics. Chowdhury serves as Director for Science Collaborations at the

Energy Frontier Research Center ULTRA (Ultra Materials for a Resilient, Smart Electricity Grid).

Awards and honors

* IEEE Fellow for contribution to wide bandgap device technology -2024 * SRC Technical Excellence Award for her contribution to heat spreading by Diamond deposition on GaN and on SiC with low thermal boundary resistance - 2023 https://www.src.org/award/tech-excellence/2023 *DARPA Young Faculty Award * National Science Foundation CAREER Award * AFOSR Young Investigator Program * International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors Young Scientist Award *

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

Frontiers of Engineering

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chowdhury, Srabanti American academics of Indian descent 21st-century Indian scholars Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering faculty Fellows of the IEEE Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Calcutta alumni University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Arizona State University faculty University of California, Davis faculty American education awards National Science Foundation Career awards