David E Aspnes earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1965. He joined Bell Laboratories after one year of postdoctoral work. In 1984, he was made Head of the Interface Physics Department at Bellcore. Later, in 1992, he moved into academia, joining North Carolina State University. Today, he is Distinguished University Professor and Director of Graduate Programs.

Aspnes is a Fellow of OSA and recipient of the 1987 R. W. Wood Prize “for a pioneering role in the development of the technique of spectroscopic ellipsometry as a probe for materials characterization.”