The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering congratulates Professor Junichiro Kono who will become full professor in July 2009.  He joined Rice University in 2000 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and rose to Associate Professor in 2005, and in 2009 he received a joint appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Current research in the Kono Laboratory focuses on the fundamental physics of semiconductor nanostructures and carbon nanomaterials.  Using state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques, his research group investigates various optical and terahertz processes in a variety of nanostructures.  Recent accomplishments include ultrafast optical manipulation of ferromagnetism in semiconductors, magnetic brightening of “dark” excitons in carbon nanotubes, and generation of coherent lattice vibrations in carbon nanotubes.  These studies can lead to innovative semiconductor ‘opto-spintronic’ devices for controlling magnetism by light as well as for filling the terahertz ‘technology gap’ that exists between electronics and photonics.  Such devices can become the fundamental building-blocks for future technology such as optical quantum information processing, which can have tremendous impact on information technology by revolutionizing the way we process and store information.  Furthermore, these systems can provide a controlled environment in which to address unanswered basic questions in many-body physics.

Professor Kono has successfully obtained multi-million-dollar grants from federal agencies.  In particular, he is PI on a NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) grant, which investigates the ultrafast and nonlinear optical properties of semiconductor quantum structures and carbon nanotubes.  The project has established a long-term partnership between Rice University, University of Florida, and Texas A&M University in the U.S. and Osaka Institute of Technology and Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.  It includes a tiered program of education activities targeting students at different stages of their academic careers to attract young people to the emerging areas of electrical engineering and the physical sciences, especially nanotechnology, and to contribute to the development of a generation of globally competent scientists and engineers.

The cornerstone of the educational activities is an eleven-week study and research internship program in Japan for graduate and undergraduate students from U.S. universities.  This program, called the NanoJapan Program, offers an integrated approach to research and education in nanoscale science and technology through undergraduate overseas study.  This summer program enables students to participate in a three-week cultural and language immersion in Tokyo followed by an eight-week research internship with leading nanotechnology labs throughout Japan.  During the research internship students work closely with their Japanese research advisor and graduate mentor on projects relating to nanoscale semiconductor devices, nanophotonics, and carbon nanotubes.  NanoJapan received the Andrew Heiskell Innovation in Study Abroad Award in 2008, and to date 64 undergraduates from universities throughout the US have participated in this program.

Dr. Kono earned his Ph.D. in Physics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY and M.S. and B.S. in Applied Physics at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Before joining Rice, he was a Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory Fellow in the Department of Physics at Stanford University.  He also served as visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Terahertz Science and Technology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California.

He will present a research overview during the New Professor Lecture Series, October 7, 2009.

For more information on the Kono Laboratory: http://www.ece.rice.edu/~kono/

For more information on NanoJapan: http://nanojapan.rice.edu