Research Interests Siddha Pimputkar joined Lehigh following his postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he oversaw the bulk gallium nitride group research efforts and had been researching bulk, single crystal growth of GaN since 2007. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara while being advised by Nobel Laureate Professor Shuji Nakamura and Prof. Jim Speck. During his Ph.D., he built the lab necessary to safely operate multiple high temperature and high pressure vessels filled with toxic, pyrophoric and explosive materials needed to grow GaN and demonstrated the highest reported growth rates for GaN grown using the basic ammonothermal method. His current research interests include explaining the various observed phenomena during ammonothermal growth of GaN and investigating alternative bulk GaN growth methods. He was awarded both the prestigious NSF Graduate Student Fellowship and the DHS Graduate Student Fellowship, has published eight papers and one book, has been invited to speak at nine conferences, and holds three U.S. patents with 24 patent applications pending. Research areas: Bulk and thin film inorganic crystal growth, electronic/optoelectronic devices, nitride and oxy-nitride materials, advanced materials, thermodynamics, electronic and optical properties, development of innovative crystal growth systems, operate at the intersection between academia and industry

Materials Science