Dr. Ian Ferguson has been named the new chairman of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the Lee College of Engineering. He will begin his new position in August 2009.

Dr. Ferguson has most recently been a faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also brings valuable administrative experience to UNC Charlotte as a former Research Development Director at EMCORE Corporation.

Dr. Ferguson is a leading scholar in the area of wide bandgap materials and devices. His work on GaN and ZnO materials has applications in nanotechnology and energy production, and he has had very significant funding in illumination, solar, spintronic, and nuclear detection. He is particularly well-known in the area of solid-state lighting and he has done pioneering work on solar cell technology.

He is author of more than 140 journal articles and many more conference and proceeding papers. In the past five years, he has supervised and graduated 15 MS and Ph.D. students, and he is currently supervising 10 graduate students. Dr. Ferguson is a Fellow of the SPIE.