Donhee Ham named an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer

Solid-State Circuits Society honors electrical engineer known for his work in plasmonic circuits and solid-state and biological systems interfaces
Donhee Ham , Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and of Applied Physics in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), was named an IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Distinguished Lecturer for 2012-13.

The SSCS Distinguished Lecturer Program selects experts in the Society’s areas of interest to speak at chapter meetings and regional seminars.

Ham is among 17 current lecturers who will serve for overlapping two-year terms.

Originally from Busan, South Korea, Ham earned a B.S. degree in physics from Seoul National University, South Korea, in 1996.

Following a year and a half of mandatory service in the Republic of Korea Army, he went to the California Institute of Technology for graduate training in physics.

There he worked on general relativity and gravitational astrophysics under Professor Barry Barish , and later obtained a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, in 2002. His doctoral work examined the statistical physics of electrical circuits.

The intellectual focus of Ham’s current research is on solid-state and biological systems interfaces and plasmonic circuits using interacting electrons in low dimension.

In 2008, he was recognized by MIT’s Technology Review as among the world’s top 35 young innovators (TR35) for his group’s work on a CMOS RF biomolecular sensor that utilizes nuclear spin resonance to pursue disease screening and medical diagnostics in a low-cost, hand-held platform.

Ham was also named a Harvard Yearbook favorite professor in 2011 and 2012 and recently participated in the Harvard Thinks Big lecture program.