Dr. Andrew J. Steckl has 35 years of experience working as a research scientist in industry and university professor. Over the period 1972-76 , first at Honeywell and then at Rockwell, Dr. Steckl investigated infrared devices and charge-coupled devices. His pioneering work on IRCCD's has been recognized through a number of invited review presentations and papers.

In 1976 , Dr. Steckl joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a faculty member in the Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department. At Rensselaer , Dr. Steckl carried out research activities in the fields of semiconductor devices and microfabrication, including projects on electron beam lithography, focused ion beam technology and applications, reactive ion etching, refractory metal silicides, charge coupled devices, MOS memory devices. Under Dr. Steckl's leadership, a multi-disciplinary Center for Integrated Electronics was established in 1981 at Rensselaer . Dr. Steckl served as the founding director of CIE for its first five years. Twenty five years later, CIE continues to serve as the focus for semiconductor related research activities at Rensselaer .

In 1979 , Dr. Steckl was invited to write a chapter on “Charge Coupled Devices” to the 2 nd edition of the authoritative Infrared Master Handbook published by the Office of Naval Research and a chapter on “Refractory Gates for VLSI” for the VLSI Electronics book series published by Academic Press. Dr. Steckl has served as guest editor of a Special Issue on Infrared Devices for the IEEE Transaction on Electron Devices (Jan. 1980 ).

In 1988 , Dr. Steckl joined the University of Cincinnati as Ohio Eminent Scholar and Gieringer Professor of Solid State Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. At Cincinnati , Dr. Steckl established the Nanoelectronics Laboratory , currently conducting research in: (1) rare-earth-doped III-N light emitting materials (MBE) and devices for flat panel displays, optical waveguide amplifiers, lasers; (2) electrofluidic devices for biotech applications; (3) organic and biopolymeric materials for photonic and electronic devices. Since 2001 , Dr. Steckl has been the co-director of the campus-wide initiative on Photonics and Nanostructures , which brings together faculty and students from several science and engineering disciplines with a common interest in the science and applications of light emitting materials. As part of this initiative several new faculty members were hired, new multi-disciplinary research projects have been initiated, and a grant (with Dr. Steckl as co-PI) was awarded by NSF in 2002 for the acquisition of an electron beam lithography facility.

In connection with his research on focused ion beam for device micro/nanofabrication, Dr. Steckl was invited to write a review paper for a Special Issue of the Proceedings of IEEE on the “Future of Integrated Circuits” (Dec 1986 ). In 1988 he was the conference chairman for the International Symposium on Focused Ion Beam Technology held in Chicago . In 1997 , Dr. Steckl was invited to present reviews on “FIB fabrication of optoelectronic devices” at meetings held in Chicago , IL and Tenerife , Spain . Two of his publications were selected for the 1998 SPIE Milestone Series of Selected Reprints on Quantum Well Intermixing in Photonics . The impact of Dr. Steckl's work in this field was also recognized in 1998 and 1999 when he was elected IEEE Fellow and Scientific Member of the Bohmische Physikalische Gesselschaft for “Contributions to focused ion beam implantation and semiconductor fabrication”.

In recognition of his work with silicon carbide, Dr. Steckl was invited to write two extensive reviews: a review paper on SiC reactive ion etching for a Special Issue on SiC in Physica Status Solidi (July 1997 ) and a chapter on the building blocks of SiC devices (ohmic and rectifying contacts, and p-n junctions) for Silicon Carbide: Materials and Devices published by Academic Press in 1998 . The techniques and methodology developed by Dr. Steckl's group over a period of 10 years for SiC reactive ion etching are now widely quoted in the scientific literature and have been adopted for use in many laboratories in the US and abroad.

The accomplishments by the Steckl group in the area of rare-earth-doped GaN light emitting devices range from the first red-green-blue color emission based on rare earth doped GaN to the first visible laser emission on Si. This work has received wide recognition in the form of invited presentations at many international meetings: in 2000 at ECS Toronto and E-MRS Strasbourg, France; in 2002 at SPIE San Jose and MRS Boston; in 2004 at the EL Conference in Toronto and LEOS Conference in San Juan; in 2005 at Photonics West in San Jose, MRS San Francisco, E-MRS in Strasbourg, LEOS Sydneym PacifiChem in Honolulu; in 2006 at PQE Snowbird, LEOS Ottawa, IBELDM in Shirahama Japan. Several invited review articles have been published by the MRS Bulletin ( 1999 ), Compound Semiconductor ( 2000 ), IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics ( 2002 ): “Rare-earth-doped GaN: Growth, Properties and Fabrication of Electroluminescent Devices”. Two book chapters reviewing the optical properties and the display applications of rare-earth-doped GaN have been published by Dr. Steckl and colleagues in III-V Nitride Semiconductors: Optical Properties , Taylor and Francis Science Publishers ( 2002 ) and in the Handbook of Luminescence and Display Materials and Devices , American Scientific Publ. ( 2003 ). In recognition of his work with devices for flat panel displays and solid state lighting, in 2004 Prof. Steckl was appointed Associate Editor of the IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology .

Starting in 2004, a new direction for the NanoLab has been towards novel biotech materials, devices and applications. This research has rapidly borne fruit, leading to the first high efficiency DNA-based BioLED ( Applied Physics Letters 2006 ), stimulated emission in lumophore-doped DNA films ( Applied Optics 2007 ), the first nanometer-scale DNA thin films ( Nano Letters 2007 ), the first liquid-state transistor ( Appl. Phys. Lett. 2007) and an article reviewing the status and prospects of DNA Photonics in the inaugural issue of Nature Photonics ( 2007).

To date, Prof. Steckl has graduated 35 Ph. D. students (3 Ph. D.'s in 2006 ). Together with his students, he has published 360 papers, which have received a total of over 3,000 citations to date (325 citations in 2006) . Prof. Steckl has also obtained 9 patents at UC on various light emitting materials and devices (with 3 patents issued in 2006 ). He has been awarded over $15M in research funding while at UC from a variety of sources, including federal agencies (such as Army Research Office, Army Research Laboratory, Air Force Research Laboratory, National Security Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation), State of Ohio agencies (Ohio Department of Development, Edison Materials Center) and industry (Motorola, Dow Corning, etc.).