Principal Investigator
Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury
Srabanti received her B. Tech in Radiophysics and Electronics from Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics, India and her M.S and PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently she is the leader of the Chowdhury Research Group in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering department at University of California, Davis.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr. Matthew A. Laurent (2015-present)
Dr. Laurent received his B.S. in Applied Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2009, and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2016. Matt’s research interests include metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) of wide bandgap semiconductor materials, as well as understanding electrical transport in these materials and across heterojunction interfaces. His goals are to apply the results of cutting-edge materials research to emerging technologies. When Matt isn’t in the lab, you can most likely find him shredding up the mountain biking trails of Northern California.
Dr. Jaeyi Chun (2017 – Present)
Dr. Chun received his Ph.D. in Nanobio Materials and Electronics from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea in 2016. He joined Dr. Chowdhury’s group in 2017. His current research focuses on Gallium Nitride (GaN) vertical transistors for power electronics.
Dr. Dong Ji (Ph.D 2013-2017, Post doc 2018-present)
Dong Ji received his B.S. degree from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2013, M.S. from Arizona State University in 2014, and Ph.D. from UC Davis in 2017. During his Ph.D. research with Prof. Srabanti Chowdhury he focused on gallium nitride devices for high power electronics applications and made significant achievements advancing the field. In his Ph.D. career, Dong has published over 20 peer-reviewed journal papers, presented in 7 international conferences including the very prestigious International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM-2017) and Device Research Conference (DRC- 2017), co-invented 2 patents, and co-authored 1 book chapter. He received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Oversea Students in 2016. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Chowdhury’s group to further the research in power electronic devices.
PhD. Students
Saba Rajabi (PhD candidate, 2014-present)
Saba Rajabi received her B. Sc. And M. Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tabriz and Tehran Universities, Iran, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. In 2013, she received her second M. Sc degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. In her Master’s thesis work, she was successful in developing and verifying a model for the static behavior of chalcogenide based programmable metallization cells. Saba joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group as PhD student in January 2014 at Arizona State University and transferred to University of California at Davis at September 2016. She has been working on design, simulation, fabrication and testing of new N-Polar GaN-based unit cells for highly efficient integrated power conversion. The project is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) program.
Zheng Xu (PhD candidate, 2015-present)
Zheng is currently a PhD student in Dr. Chowdhury’s group. She is mainly focusing on how to push GaN’s RF performance to an ultrahigh frequency. She is currently working on, GaN based hot electron transistor novel devices . Zheng’s research field interest includes GaN RF devices, Terahertz devices and all related characterization methods.
Burcu Ercan( PhD candidate 2016-present)
Burcu Ercan received her Bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey in 2010. In 2015, she received her MS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of California, Davis. She joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group in Summer 2016. She has been working on developing thermally grown oxide layers as a dielectric layer in InAlN/AlN/GaN/Sapphire HEMTs.
Siwei Li (PhD candidate 2017-present)
Mohamadali Malakoutin (PhD student 2017-present)
Chenhao Ren (PhD student 2018-present)
Chenhao received his Bachelor Degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Iowa State University in 2015. In 2017, he received his Master degree from University of Southern California focusing on III-V semiconductor device fabrication and materials growth. He joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s research group in January 2018. Chenhao’s current research is focusing on GaN/AlGaN growth using MOCVD technique.
Hansol Ku (PhD student 2018-present)
Sridhar Majety (PhD student 2018-present)
Sridhar Majety received his Bachelor and Master of Technology in Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2015. As a part of his master’s thesis project, he worked on Interface trap characterization of ALD grown Al2O3/AlGaN/GaN MIS and MISHEMT structures using deep level transient/optical spectroscopy (DLTS/DLOS). He later worked at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as a project research associate on wet-oxidation of AlGaN to grow gate oxide in AlGaN/GaN HEMT. He received his M.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering in University of Manitoba, Canada in 2016. He worked on vapor-liquid-solid grown silicon microwire arrays for hydrogen fuel generation. He started his Ph.D in Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group in September 2018. He will be working on GaN devices for high power switching and RF applications.
Maliha Noshin (PhD student 2018-present)
Maliha Noshin received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh in 2016 and 2018 respectively. Her previous research experience includes modeling and thermal transport characterization of novel 2-D monolayers and heterobilayers. She started her Ph.D. in Chowdhury research group from September 2018. She is interested in exploring GaN based high power nanoelectronic devices
Former Members
Dr. Fetene M. Yigletu (2015-2017)
Fetene has received his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from Hawassa University in Ethiopia in 2007. He has been working as a Mobile Network Operation and Optimization Engineer with Ethio-Telecom until 2010. In 2010 he joined the research group of Prof. Benjamin Iniguez at the University of Rovira i Virgili, Catalonia Spain, where he obtained his MSc in 2011 and his PhD in 2014 in Electronics Engineering. His doctoral research and thesis was focused on physics-based compact modeling of GaN based HEMT devices where he has developed novel compact models for these devices. During the year 2012 he was with RFMD (UK) where he has work as an intern Engineer as part of his PhD degree. He joined Chowdhury’s group in January 2016. His current research interest is compact modeling and circuit simulation of lateral and vertical power and RF devices ranging from DC to RF level.
Dr. Mahadeva Bhat Kanathila (2016-2017)
Mahadeva got his M.Sc. in Materials Science from Mangalore University, India, in 1993. Subsequently he joined Solid State Physics Laboratory, India as Scientist and worked on GaAs based Transistors and MMICs. He Received his doctorate in physics from IIT Madras, Chennai, India in the year 2013. Mahadeva joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group in march 2016 and currently working on GaN based vertical Diodes and Transistors.
Dr. Shirong Zhao (PhD: 2013-2016)
Shirong got his B.S and M.S. in physics at Wuhan University, China, in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He has been a PhD student in electrical engineering supervised by Dr. Chowdhury at ASU since 2013. Prior to joining the group, he had been doing research on ohmic contacts to p-GaN by ion implantation and nano-scale on-chip inductor by integration of ferromagnetic materials. He is currently working on developing ohmic contact for InGaN solar cell operating at 550C. His research interests include high temperature ohmic contacts to GaN and high temperature GaN electronics.
Dr. Wenwen Li (PhD 2013-2017, Post doc 2018)
Wenwen Li received her Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from Xidian University, China in 2010. In 2013, she received her MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Xidian University, China. Wenwen Li joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group in summer 2013. She has been working on developing GaN vertical MOSFETs for high power switching applications and GaN SITs for high power RF applications.
Dr. Maitreya Dutta (PhD: 2014-2017)
Maitreya Dutta received his B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology, India in 2011. In 2014, he received his MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. For his Master’s thesis work, he was successful in demonstrating how spontaneous all-electric spin polarization could be achieved in quantum point contact devices in the presence of lateral spin orbit coupling. He was awarded the University Graduate Scholarship by the University of Cincinnati for the duration of his Masters coursework. Maitreya joined Dr. Srabanti Chowdhury’s group in Summer 2014 where he has been working on developing low-cost, vertical diamond power transistors using diamond. The project is funded by Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) under the SWITCHES program.
Dr. Saptarshi Mandal (PhD: 2014-2017)
Saptarshi completed his undergrad in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering in India, from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2010. Following that, he worked for a year at the Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Center in India, where his work included using TCAD simulation to match submicron scale GaAs pseudomorphic HEMTs’ performance. He then worked on his Master’s in Electrical engineering from 2011 to 2013, at the University of Toledo. His thesis work was on the study of doped transition metal oxide synapses for neuromorphic applications, and was funded by the National Science Foundation and IBM Award. Saptarshi started his PhD in the Next Gen Power Device group, in 2014. His doctoral work was on simulation, fabrication and characterization of GaN CAVETs for power and RF electronics applications. His work also included thermal characterization of lateral HEMTs and vertical CAVETs as well as fabrication and characterization of GaN vertical IMPATT diodes. Saptarshi was instrumental in setting up and maintaining the device characterization lab in the group, and responsible for creating a baseline process for lateral and vertical transistors, using submicron i-line lithography. He graduated in December 2017 and currently is working at Intel’s Portland Technology Development center in Hillsboro, Oregon, as a Device development and Integration Engineer, in the Pathfinding group. When not “sciencing” at work, you’ll usually find him in one of the hiking trails of the Pacific Northwest.
Dr. Jianyi Gao (PhD: 2014-2018)
Jianyi Gao received the B.S. from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2011 and the M.S. from University of Florida, in 2014. He joined Dr. Chowdhury’s group as a PhD student in 2014. His research interests include characterization of interface and border traps in GaN based MOS capacitors using UV-assisted capacitance-voltage measurement, ALD/PEALD Al2O3 or PEALD SiO2 are prepared for MOS capacitors, and fabrication and optimization of lateral AlGaN/GaN MISHEMT with field-plates structure. High breakdown voltage up to 1kV was achieved.
Harshad Surdi (PhD candidate, 2015-2018)
Harshad completed his B.E. in Electronics and Tele-communication from University of Pune, India in 2012. He was a Junior Research Fellow till 2014 in Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Institute, Mumbai working on Terahertz devices. He completed his Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Ariozona State University, Tempe in 2016 with a thesis on Applications of Kinetic Inductance. Harshad has now started a PhD with Dr. Chowdhury working on high power and high frequency diamond lateral FETs that uses diamond’s unique property of surface conduction through hydrogen termination.