Milton Feng is the Nick Holonyak Jr. Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his BS degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University and his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. From 1979 to 1983, he was head of the GaAs material and device group at Torrance Research Center, Hughes Aircraft Company. In 1984, he joined Ford Microelectronics, Inc. He has been with the University of Illinois since 1991.

Feng has published over 237 papers, 216 conference talks, and been granted 35 U.S. patents in semiconductor microelectronics. He is an IEEE and OSA Fellow, and serves on many executive and strategy committees both in industry and at conferences. In 1989, he received the Ford Aerospace Corporate Technology Outstanding Principal Investigator Award. He has also received the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the Pan Wen Yuan Outstanding Research Award in Microelectronics, and in 2005, he was chosen as the first Holonyak Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2013, he received OSA’s R.W. Wood Prize “for contributions to the invention and realization of the transistor laser, delivering simultaneously both an electrical signal and a coherent laser output and providing the basis for a revolutionary new higher speed electronic-photonic integrated circuit.”