Dr. Shin-Shem Steven Pei Biography

Dr. Steven Pei is Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Professor of Physics, and Deputy Director of the Texas Center for Advanced Materials.

He received his BS degree in Physics from the National Taiwan University in 1970 and Ph.D. in Solid State Physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1978. After graduation, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. He became the supervisor of the Heterostructure integrated circuit group in 1984 and led the AT&T, Hughes Aircraft and McDonnell-Douglas team to transfer the GaAs high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technology to the DARPA GaAs pilot production line at the AT&T Microelectronics facility at Reading, PA. In 1986, he was promoted to the head of the Heterostructure Materials and Devices Department.

In 1994 Dr. Pei joined the UH faculty as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associate Director for Research of Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center (SVEC), a NASA Center for Space Commercialization. Its satellite, Wake Shield Facility, flew three times with the space shuttle between 1994 and 1996.

Dr. Pei research interests at UH include quantum well, quantum dot, carbon nanotubes and superconducting materials and devices for high-speed optoelectronic applications. His research at UH led to the spin-off of Applied Optoelectronics Inc. (AOI), Sugar Land, TX, in 1997. AOI specializes in the manufacture of high-performance lasers, photodetectors, and related assemblies for fiber optic networks including cable television, wireless, and high performance digital optical networks with over 125 employees.

Prior to establishing the Southwest Public Safety Technology, Dr. Pei was the Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and the Deputy Director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials (TcSAM). Dr. Pei published over 70 papers on semiconductor and superconducting devices and materials. Six patents have been awarded to him. He was an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and a member of IEEE, APS, AVS, SPIE, MRS. He also serves on the 18th Congressional District Homeland Security Task Force, City of Houston Tower Commission, Board of the Association of Chinese American Professionals (ACAP), and as an advisor to the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, Texas Chapter (CAST-TX). Dr. Pei was the founding co-chair of the Houston 80-20 in 1999, which led to the creation of the first Asian American PAC in Houston.