Alfred Y. Cho

Alfred Yi Cho, Chinese卓 以 和( * July 10, 1937 in Beijing) is a Chinese- American electrical engineer.

Cho went to Hong Kong in 1949, where he attended school. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, where he purchased in 1961 for his Masters degree and received his doctorate in 1968. In between, he was from 1961 at the Ion Physics Corporation in Burlington ( Massachusetts) and from 1962 in the TRW Space Technology Laboratories, Redondo Beach, where he conducted research on ion beams of high intensity. In 1968 he went to the Bell Laboratories, where he was head of department and 1987 Head of Materials Processing Research Lab in 1984. He was there from 1990 director of semiconductor research.

Cho is one of the inventors of the molecular beam epitaxy (Molecular Beam Epitaxy, MBE), which he developed in the late 1960s, with John R. Arthur at Bell Labs. With Federico Capasso, he also developed the quantum cascade laser at Bell Labs in the 1990s. He has published over 400 articles and holds 46 patents ( 2010).

Among his numerous awards include the IEEE Medal of Honor (1993 ), the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1995), the Heinrich Welker Medal of Siemens (1986 ), the American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (1982 ), the Morris E. Liebmann Award from the IEEE in 1994, the National Medal of Science and the Von Hippel Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE. In 2009 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Cho is married and has one son and three daughters.