President Shirley Ann Jackson said, “Dr. Schubert brings substantial research activity and an exciting and productive new research thrust that will expand Rensselaer’s global reach and global impact.

“Our research in future chips and our programs of graduate and undergraduate education in microelectronics and information technology will benefit from his energy, his expertise, and his innovative spirit.”

Upon his arrival, Schubert received a very warm welcome from the community. The faculty orientation process was “an excellent mixture of receptions, presentations, lunches, and tours, which allowed me to become familiar with the Rensselaer family,” added Schubert.

As senior professor of the constellation—a team of senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students led by an expert in a particular research field of strategic and focal interest to the university—Schubert has been tasked with many painstaking duties.

“My responsibilities include establishment of a group of faculty and associates, called a constellation, developing next-generation chips. These chips will be suitable for a number of applications including lighting, communications, and sensing,” stated Schubert.

“My responsibilities also include innovations in teaching to provide Rensselaer students with an exhilarating experience at every stage of their studies,” Schubert continued.

Schubert is respected throughout the world for his invention that transformed traffic signals and airport runway lighting using the resonant cavity light-emitting diode and photon-recycling semiconductor LED’s. He has worked in this field for over 20 years and has 183 publications, three books, and 31 patents to his name.

Having roots embedded in the University of Stuttgart in Germany, where he pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies, has given Schubert the vast academic knowledge needed to perform.

After his studies he went onto work at AT&T Bell Laboratories for ten years before becoming a full time professor at Boston University. While at BU, he was the director of the Semiconductor Devices Research Laboratory and was part of the affiliated faculty of the Photonics Center.

Accolades seem to come easy to Schubert as he is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the International Society for Optical Engineering. He also was the recipient of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award in 1999.

For this, an entirely new position at Rensselaer, Schubert has several plans. “I would like to form an interdisciplinary group of a diverse group of faculty working on the next-generation of compound-semiconductor technologies. I hope this assembly will include the Lighting Research Center, materials scientists, physicists, electrical engineers, and others.”