Two Indian American researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been recognized for early-career excellence with named professorships.
Shubhra Pasayat and Chirag Gupta, both assistant professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), were named Dugald C. Jackson Assistant Professors.
The distinct honor recognizes outstanding faculty achievements in research, instruction, and institutional service. The professorships honor the legacy of Dugald C. Jackson, who established the university’s electrical engineering discipline in 1891.
Both faculty members completed their foundational engineering degrees at elite technology institutes in India before pursuing graduate work in the United States, utilizing their research backgrounds to target industry-relevant semiconductor challenges.
Pasayat completed her Bachelor of Technology degree at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 2013. Following her undergraduate studies, she worked as a senior hardware engineer at the Samsung R&D Institute in Bangalore.
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She then moved to the United States for graduate studies, completing her doctorate in electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2021. She joined the UW-Madison faculty the same year.
Pasayat’s research focuses on the design and growth of wide and ultra-wide-bandgap semiconductor materials using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition.
Her laboratory works to scale these materials into high-electron-mobility transistors and optoelectronic components, with the goal of making them industry-ready.
The research directly impacts technologies requiring efficient power conversion, such as electric vehicles, and high-frequency systems like 5G and 6G communications.
It also translates to consumer optoelectronics like LEDs and lasers used in displays, automotive headlamps, and water sanitization arrays.
Gupta followed a comparable academic path from India to the American Midwest. He earned his Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 2013, where he received an Academic Excellence Award.
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Moving to the United States for higher education, he completed his master’s degree in 2016 and earned his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2018.
Before entering academia, Gupta worked as a device engineer for Maxim Integrated, which is now a part of Analog Devices.
Gupta’s research addresses the physical architecture and fabrication methods of wide-bandgap and ultra-wide-bandgap materials, specifically focusing on gallium nitride and related oxides.
His experimental designs involve semiconductor device physics and data analysis aimed at building novel electronic and optoelectronic hardware.
These next-generation transistors and diodes are built alongside standard silicon to solve emerging efficiency challenges in industrial power electronics, high-frequency communications, and bio-electronic systems.
The named professorships will provide both assistant professors with sustained institutional support to expand UW-Madison’s semiconductor research capabilities and mentor upcoming engineering students.