2005 Plenary Speaker

Emerging Commercial Applications for Optoelectronics, Arpad A. Bergh, OIDA, USA

Optoelectronics is not an industry or a market ---- it is a technology. It provides the underpinnings of the Information Age enabling imaging, storage, high speed transmission and displays. It also plays a crucial role in many emerging commercial domains such as energy conservation, bio-technology, and defense and homeland security applications.

A major driving force today is the digital home which provides the ability to move content at will between people and devices. It affects the way we live, communicate, get educated and practice medicine. These changes lead to a convergence of the traditional industry segments of communications, computers and consumer electronics as amply demonstrated at the '05 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Over 60% of the market value of new products displayed at CES was in products enabled by optoelectronics.

As these market segments merge, more and more people and devices get seamlessly interconnected with a digital capability available everywhere when we need it, where we need it and how we need it. The implications of these changes for emerging optoelectronics markets will be discussed.

Arpad A. Bergh received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and joined Bell Laboratories where he became head of the Compound Semiconductor Materials and Devices Department in Murray Hill, NJ in 1968. When Bellcore was formed in 1984, Dr. Bergh became Division Manager of the Device Science and Technology Research Division, and. later the Executive Director of the Applied Research Program Development.

In 1994 he retired from Bellcore to become full time president of the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA) in Washington, DC. OIDA is an industry association representing the North American optoelectronics industry. Affiliate members include national laboratories and university centers engaged in optoelectronics research.

He holds 11 patents, has authored over 20 papers on semiconductor materials and devices. He has co-authored a book on Light Emitting Diodes, published by Oxford Press in 1976. and several book chapters on Network Systems Applications and Markets for Optoelectronic Integration. He is a fellow of the IEEE, member of OSA and SPIE and a founding member of the International Coalition of Optoelectronic Industry Associations (ICOIA).