"For contributions to vertical cavity surface emitting semiconductor lasers and dynamic single-mode semiconductor lasers." In that terse phrase, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Laser and Electro-Optics Society (IEEE LEOS) characterized its reasons for bestowing the prestigious William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award on Fumio Koyama in 2008.

Koyama inherits the mantle of vanguard research in photonics at Tokyo Tech. He studied and worked under Kenichi Iga, famed as an inventor of the vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) and now the president of Tokyo Tech. Koyama is a professor in the university's Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, and he heads a newly established center of excellence at Tokyo Tech dubbed Photonics Integration-Core Electronics.

"Our center of excellence carries on the work of an earlier COE project at Tokyo Tech called Photonics Nanodevice Integrated Engineering. That project ran from 2002 to 2007 under the leadership of Professor Shigehisa Arai. Basically, we focus on the fusion of photonics and nanoelectronics."

The charter of Koyama's COE spells out clear research priorities: (1) basic research aimed at breakthroughs in photonics and nanoelectronics, (2) advances in integrating photonics and electronics, and (3) developing applications for integrated photonics and electronics in practical systems. It calls for accompanying those priorities with a rigorous emphasis on education. And it provides for furthering the center's research and education goals through close collaboration with U.S. and U.K. counterparts: the Center for Optoelectronic Nanostructured Semiconductor Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Center for Advanced Photonics and Electronics at the University of Cambridge.

Thinking globally

Koyama is visibly passionate about his COE's mandate for promoting international exchange. He devoted immense time and energy to cochairing the 2008 International Nano-Optoelectronics Workshop. That event took place in Japan during the first two weeks of August and featured talks by some of the world's biggest names in photonic research. It began with a day of sessions at Tokyo Tech, a day of technical tours of NTT Labs and Fujitsu Labs, and a day of sessions at the University of Tokyo.

The participants enjoyed a nonworking day at a winery at the foot of Mt. Fuji and then settled into a resort lodge for seven days of talks and presentations. Punctuating the intense schedule was a day of sightseeing amid the old temples and shrines of Kamakura. Koyama's fellow cochairpersons, incidentally, were both former winners of the IEEE LEOS's William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award: Connie Chang-Hasnain, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Yasuhiko Arakawa, of the University of Tokyo.

"It was a rare and exciting opportunity to hear directly from people in the forefront of research in nano-optoelectronics," recalls Koyama. "And we held poster presentations by doctoral students and post-docs to involve them fully in the proceedings."

Koyama is emphatic about the unique and important role for Tokyo Tech as a center of photonics research. "This university has always asserted special strengths in translating scientific breakthroughs into useful technology, and we continue to fulfill that role. We do that by concentrating on demonstrating practical viability—making things and showing how they work—and by working continuously to foster world-class human resources."