About the author
Dr. Epperlein is currently Technology Consultant with his own semiconductor technology consulting business, Pwe-PhotonicsElectronics-IssueResolution, and residence in the UK. He provides technical consulting services worldwide to companies in photonics and electronics industries, as well as expert assistance to European institutions through evaluations and reviews of novel optoelectronics R&D projects for their innovative capacities including competitiveness, disruptive abilities, and proper project execution to pre-determined schedules.
He looks back at a thirty year career in cutting-edge photonics and electronics industries with focus on emerging technologies, both in global and start-up companies, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, Philips/NXP, Essient Photonics and IBM/JDSU Laser Enterprise. He holds Pre-Dipl. (B.Sc.), Dipl. Phys. (M.Sc.) and Dr. rer. nat. (Ph.D.) degrees in physics, magna cum laude, from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Dr. Epperlein is a well-recognized authority in compound semiconductor and diode laser technologies. He accumulated the broad spectrum of his professional competencies in most different hands-on and managerial roles, involving design and fabrication of many different optical and electrical devices, and sophisticated diagnostic research with focus on the resolution of issues in design, materials, fabrication and reliability, and including almost every aspect of product and process development from concept to technology transfer and commercialization. He has a proven track record of hands-on experience and accomplishments in research and development of optical and electrical semiconductor devices, including semiconductor diode lasers, light-emitting diodes, optical modulators, quantum well devices, resonant tunneling devices, field-effect transistors, and superconducting tunneling devices and integrated circuits.
His extensive investigations of semiconductor materials and diode laser devices have led to numerous world-first reports on special effects in laser device functionality. Key achievements and important contributions to the improvement of development processes in emerging semiconductor technologies include his pioneering development and introduction of novel diagnostic techniques and approaches. Many have been adopted by other researchers in academia and industry, and his publications of these pioneering experiments received international recognition, as demonstrated by thousands of references, for example, in Science Citation Index and Google, advanced search exact phrase for ‘PW or Peter W Epperlein’. Many of those unique results added high value to the progress of new product or emerging technology development processes.
Dr. Epperlein authored or co-authored more than seventy peer-reviewed journal and conference technical papers, has given more than thirty invited talks at international conferences and workshops, and published more than ten invention disclosures in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin. He has served as reviewer of numerous proposals for publication in technical journals and he was awarded five IBM Research Division Awards for achievements in diode laser technology, quality management and laser commercialization.
Dr. Epperlein started his career in emerging superconductor technologies in the late seventies, with sophisticated design, modelling and measurements on superconducting materials, tunneling effects, devices and integrated circuits in his more than five years collaboration in the then revolutionary IBM Josephson Junction Superconducting Computer Project (dropped by IBM end of 1983), which included a two-year International Assignment from the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory to the IBM Watson Research Center, N.Y., USA until the mid-eighties.
This term was followed by a fundamental career re-orientation from emerging superconductor to emerging semiconductor technologies, comprising more than twenty-five years in the fields of semiconductor technologies, optoelectronics, fibre-optic communications, and with his first role to start as core member of the pioneering IBM Laser Enterprise (LE) Team, to become a spinout of IBM Research in the early nineties. He contributed significantly to research, development and commercialization of the pre-eminent pump diode laser technology for applications in optical communication networks in the early nineties along with the transition of the LE-Research Team into a competitive market leader IBM/JDSU LE some five years later.