Professor T.P. Ma Named National Taiwan University’s 2014 Outstanding Alumnus

T.P. Ma, the Raymond John Wean Professor of Electrical Engineering & Applied Physics, has been selected by National Taiwan University (NTU) to receive their 2014 Outstanding Alumnus Award. The award, which recognizes Ma’s significant contributions to the advancement of semiconductor technology, will be presented at NTU's Anniversary Celebration on November 15, 2014.

Ma's research and teaching at Yale have generally focused on microelectronics and semiconductors. A major thrust of Ma’s research has been the development of ultra-thin advanced gate dielectrics for semiconductor devices; dielectrics are a critical element of semiconductor chips and are ubiquitous throughout electronic devices today. Through R&D collaborations with numerous high-tech companies worldwide—including IBM, Intel, Motorola, and AMD—Ma’s research has proven fundamental to semiconductor technology innovation.

Additionally, Ma has made major contributions to a novel cell architecture for dynamic random access memory (DRAM)—the type of memory that’s used in your laptop or desktop computer, as well as in mobile devices—as well as flash EPROM memory devices. In these areas, Ma has consistently shown the advantages of alternative construction materials, such as ferroelectrics thin films and silicon nitride—a research focus that he has also applied to his more recent work on III-V semiconductors.

After earning his doctorate in electrical engineering from Yale in 1974, Ma spent three years at IBM researching advanced silicon device technology and ionizing radiation effects in MOS devices before returning to Yale as a faculty member. Since then, he has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, elected to the National Academy of Engineering, elected to the Chinese Academy of Science as a foreign member, named an Academician in the Academia Sinica (equivalent to the Academy of Science) of Taiwan, and received the Connecticut Medal of Technology.

In addition to serving as a Co-Director of the Yale Center for Microelectronics, and a Co-Director of the Yale-Peking Joint Center for Microelectronics and Nanotechnology, Ma was also the Chairman of Yale’s Electrical Engineering Department from July, 1991-June, 1996, and from July, 2000-June, 2007.