<p>2006 MILLENNIUM TECHNOLOGY PRIZE
AWARDED TO UCSB'S SHUJI NAKAMURA
World's Biggest Technology Prize Includes $1.3-Million Cash Award</p>
<p>June 15, 2006 </p>
<p>Nakamura and others is scheduled for today, June 15, at 1 p.m. PDT in Room 1001 of the Engineering Science Building at UC Santa Barbara. Media parking is at the structure marked Parking 10.</p>
<p>(Santa Barbara, Calif.) Professor Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara has been awarded the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize for his invention of revolutionary new light sources: blue, green, and white light-emitting diodes and the blue laser diode.</p>
<p>The award, which includes a cash prize of one million Euros (approximately $1.3-million), was announced in Helsinki, Finland early today. The Millennium Technology Prize is the world's biggest technology award. Presented by Finland's Millennium Prize Foundation, it recognizes outstanding technological achievement aimed at promoting quality of life and sustainable development. </p>
<p>Presented only in alternate years, the Millennium Technology Prize was first awarded in 2004 to Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web.</p>
<p>Nakamura is a professor of materials and of electrical and computer engineering in UC Santa Barbara's College of Engineering, where he is also co-director of the Solid State Lighting and Display Center. The award will be presented to him by the President of Finland at a ceremony in Helsinki on September 8.</p>
<p>"Professor Nakamura has achieved the holy grail' of semiconductor research by developing blue, green and white light-emitting diodes and the blue laser diode," said Pekka Tarjanne, chairman of the International Award Selection Committee and former director-general of the International Telecommunications Union. "His technological innovations in the field of semiconductor materials and devices are groundbreaking."</p>
<p>Tarjanne said that Nakamura's breakthroughs have a variety of important applications across an array of fields: in communication and information, for improving optical data storage and display; in energy and the environment, by enabling energy-efficient, solid-state lighting and power-switching technology; and in health care and life sciences, through ultraviolet light sources for water purification.</p>
<p>Nakamura is known for his technological wizardry with semiconducting gallium nitrides and is widely recognized as the world pioneer in light emitters based on the wide-bandgap semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) and its alloys with aluminum and indium.</p>