Alumni News

NTT Alumni Prosper at Stanford University

The gentle rolling foothills and low mountains on the western side of the Stanford University campus lie on the same tectonic plate as the mountains of eastern Japan. In a similar sense, a new team of researchers at Stanford is linked to NTT's Basic Research Laboratories. Furthermore they have managed to make that link a common ground on which strong collaborative scientific investigations and friendships thrive. This team is headed by Yoshihisa Yamamoto, who holds a joint appointment as a professor at Stanford University and as a member of NTT's Basic Research Laboratories. In this report, I will give a brief update on NTT alumni in the group.

Wayne Richardson, a NTT postdoc in 1989-1990, is now a Research Associate and Stanford and Group Leader of the ERATO Quantum Fluctuation Project. Before rejoining Professor Yamamoto at Stanford, he was on the staff at the Jet Propulsion Lab, California Institute of Technology. Wayne currently focuses his efforts on electrical current transport in semiconductors and mesoscopic physics.

Gunnar Bjork, a student at NTT in 1988-1989 and visitor on numerous occasions, is now a Research Associate at Stanford and a Group Leader of the ERATO Quantum Fluctuation Project. Professor Bjork is on a leave of absence from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Shuichiro Inoue, a student at NTT from 1990 to 1993, is now a post-doctoral Fellow. Inoue-san is continuing to work on the generation of squeezed vacuum from semiconductor lasers.

Anders Karlsson, NTT postdoc in 1992, is now on the staff at the Royal Institute of Technology. He visited the Yamamoto group at Stanford for three months earlier this year and for roughly the same period last year. Anders is continuing to work on QND measurement and optical repeaters.

Some news from Berlin

It took quite some time until I managed to convince myself that now (i.e. in the German vacation time where the house is half empty and everything is somewhat more relaxed) is the time to write my contribution to the "Global News" before even the "longtimers" like Arturo Chavez have forgotten about this guy from Germany who worked in the basement in the ancient days when the lab was still in Musashino. I started there in September 90 in Horikoshi-G of the Basic research labs and continued in Bukki-G after the division into two groups. I left in the end of March 92 after one-and-a-half mostly pleasant years, which besides lots of new experiences in a country so different from Germany also brought a bit of scientific output. We (i.e. my wife Petra, our son Simon (who was too small to remember a lot although he started speaking his first Japanese words when we left) and myself have a lot of good memories of that time (while the few not so good ones start to fade away) and still have some friends in Japan.

After our return the gathering of new experiences continued. I joined a newly founded research institute in the former eastern part of Berlin. Since I never had any connections to the eastern part of Germany I entered "terra incognita" again, only now I was able to read everything and did not have to fight with Kanji. Although the work changed considerably from standing at the growth machine and doing experiments to sitting at the desk and trying to organize the work of a group of ten scientists. But this is the kind of work I wanted, and the special situation here in the former east and in a new institute which is not yet in an equilibrium makes it even more interesting. Also Berlin is a very interesting city. Here you can see how East and West grow together again after 40 years of division. Unfortunately, we have little opportunity to check out the cultural events since the kids (Catrin was born in August 92) are still too small, but this will change. But we do appreciate that Berlin is a rather green town with lots of trees and parks and that the next lake always is near, and you can get a little refreshment in this awfully hot summer. However, one thing is rare and expensive here: Japanese food. When coming to Japan this summer I took the opportunity again to sample lots of sushi, tempura, soba and all these oishii mono. I am looking for a good excuse to come back soon.

If somebody is interested in III-V technology and happens to be in Berlin, please drop me a note and I will arrange for a visit and maybe a seminar.

Minna-sama o-genki de kenkyu wa gambarimashou.

email:weyers@fbh.fta-berlin.de

More news from Berlin

The Paul-Drude-Institut (PDI) for Solid State Electronics in Berlin was established in January 1992 following a thorough evaluation and recommendation of the German Science Council in 1991. Professor K. Ploog, who is well-known for his pioneering work on molecular beam epitaxy and the fabrication and characterization of dimensionally reduced semiconductors, and who visited NTT Basic Research Laboratories in 1990, was appointed as the director.

The institute is named after the German physicist Paul Drude (1863-1906). It is devoted to fundamental research on the electronic properties of semiconducting and insulating materials, mainly III-V compound semiconductors. These have reduced length scales in one, two or three dimensions, giving rise to quantum size and electron interference effects which are important for the development of new device concepts.

The institute evolved from selected research teams of the Central Institute of Electron Physics of the former Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Some members had been studying epitaxial growth and the electronic and structural properties of compound semiconductors over more than a decade. This broad scientific background together with the close cooperation between materials science and physics in this new institute form an excellent basis for research in nanostructured semiconductors which are now very actively studied in many research laboratories around the world.

The PDI has now 70 members. It is organized in five research groups: Nanostructures, Analytics, Optics, Carrier Transport and Solid-State Acoustics. A close cooperation exists with the universities in Berlin and with major research centers in the Berlin area. The institute also offers courses and research leading to the award of Ph.D.