Ning Cunzheng, founding dean and chair professor of the College of Integrated Circuits and Optoelectronic Chips of Pingshan District-based Shenzhen Technology University, said the college is committed to cultivating high-end talents in semiconductor and integrated optoelectronics that are urgently needed for the industrial development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).

The inauguration ceremony of the College of Integrated Circuits and Optoelectronic Chips of Shenzhen Technology University in Pingshan District. Courtesy of Pingshan Media Center

The College of Integrated Circuits and Optoelectronic Chips was inaugurated in Pinshan on July 10 this year, becoming the first of its kind in the GBA. Ning, a world-leading scientist in nanolaser and semiconductor devices, was appointed as its dean.

Known as an important integrated circuits (IC) industry base in Shenzhen, Pingshan District has been home to a number of national “little giant” enterprises. Pingshan has also initially established a complete industrial chain of materials, equipment, design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, and downstream applications. The output value of Pingshan’s IC industry and chip manufacturing industry accounts for more than 60% of the city’s total.

The integrated circuits and optoelectronics industry is among the 20 strategic emerging industry clusters of Shenzhen contributing to its future development. On June 6, with an aim to boost the development of the industries, Shenzhen identified the objectives and mapped out development directions for the strategic emerging industry clusters.

Ning has made significant discoveries, inventions and pioneering contributions to nanolaser and nanowire optoelectronic materials. He invented the world’s first white-light laser, which was listed among 2015 Top 10 Engineering Inventions selected by Popular Science, a major U.S. science and technology magazine.

During his speech at the 2022 graduation ceremony of Shenzhen Technology University in October, Ning encouraged the young graduates to never give up in their pursuit of science and technology research and development.

In 1991 Ning received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany, under the supervision of Professor Hermann Haken. He engaged in post doctoral research at Arizona State University in the U.S. in 1994. In 1997, Ning founded the Nano-Optics Research Group under the NASA AMES Research Center where he was a senior scientist, and he was appointed manager of the nanotechnology project. In 2016, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP) of the University of Tokyo in Japan, and became a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of Arizona State University in the U.S., and an adjunct profession at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona. He was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany in 2013, and in 2014 he was hired by Beijing-based Tsinghua University as a professor at the Department of Electronics and later appointed director of the International Center for Nanophotonics Research under Tsinghua University.