Chou recognized as nanotechnology pioneer

By Hilary Parker on June 27, 2007, 4:25 p.m.

Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, recently was honored for his contributions to the nanotechnology field with a Nano 50 award from Nanotech Briefs magazine.

He is one of 15 individuals selected by a panel of independent experts to receive the Innovator award in the third annual contest for his "significant background of accomplishments in advancing the state of the art in nanotechnology."

Chou is best known as the inventor of a revolutionary nanoimprinting technique, which uses a nanometer-scale mold to press ultra-small patterns onto computer chips. An active entrepreneur, he has founded two companies in central New Jersey, the Nanonex and NanoOpto Corps., to advance nanotechnology and its applications.

Chou, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined Princeton's electrical engineering department in 1998. The holder of 15 patents and some 40 patent applications, he has published more than 280 papers and delivered more than 100 invited presentations at conferences and workshops.

Earlier this year, Chou was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his "contributions to nanoscale patterning and to the scaling of electronic, photonic, magnetic and biological devices." Among many other honors, he previously was awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Cledo Brunetti Award and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ULTRA program Significant Technical Achievement Award.  

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