The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in the United States has recently announced the list of 2023 NAI Fellows, and Chair Professor Steve S. Chung of the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan, was elected as an NAI Fellow. His significant inventions and academic research in the semiconductor industry and memory have profoundly impacted areas such as high performance CPU, MCU, Nonvolatile memory. AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and information security. Recognized by the judging committee, he will be honored at an annual induction ceremony at Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 18, 2024.
The NAI Fellow, announced this year, represents the highest honor for those inventors from academia. The 2023 Fellows include 162 individuals from 35 U.S. states and 10 countries, affiliated with 118 research universities, government agencies, and non-profit research institutions. All together, they hold over 4,600 U.S. patents. The National Academy highlighted that Chair Professor Steve Chung received the award for “his demonstration as a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society”. The criteria for receiving this prestigious title include the quality and quantity of patents with sufficient impact.
Dr. Chung received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His advisor is the world renowned scholar, Professor C. T. Sah, co-inventor of CMOS transistor. Since 1987, he has been teaching at the Department of Electronics Engineering at NYCU and currently holds the position of NYCU’s Chair Professorship, UMC Research Chair, and IEEE Life Fellow.
Throughout his 40-year teaching career, he has demonstrated an international reputation in academic research. He specializes in mainstream silicon semiconductor technologies, covering core areas of the semiconductor IC industry, i.e., CMOS logic IC technology and non-volatile memory. The former includes transistor miniaturization, such as the currently popular 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer technologies. The latter covers memory, ranging from floating gate memory (the core of USB disk) to various emerging memory and Compute-In-Memory architectures. Their practical applications span a wide range, including CPUs, GPUs, MCUs, smartphones, portable devices, solid-state drives and storage, computers, automotive electronics, commercial uses like IoT, AI applications, 5G/6G communication, and cryptography.
Dr. Chung’s most influential inventions include the discovery of the third breakdown, beyond the two well known breakdowns, i.e., soft-breakdown and hard-breakdown. This breakthrough can enhance applications like One-Time-Programming (OTP) memory used in power management, key generation, hardware security etc. in smartphones. Another significant invention is to break the limit of 28 nanometer flash memory, enabling an extension of a memory cell to even below one nanometer (1nm) and beyond, which paves the way for future embedded memory technologies in conjunction with Taiwan’s strengths in high performance processors, marking a milestone in the nanotechnology era.
Except the academic accomplishments and inventors of around 50 patents, he has strong involvements in worldwide affairs, such as current IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, Senior Editor of Springer series, Executive Committee member of VLSI symposium, and with past involvements as editors of IEEE Trans. ED, EDL, Journal of EDS, EDS Asian-Pacific chair, Board of Governor (12 years). Among numerous awards, he was awarded three time’s Outstanding Research Award from the National Science Council, National Science Council’s Distinguished Research Fellow, Distinguished PI of National Science Council, Pan Wen Yuan Outstanding Research Award, Lifetime Achievement Award of inventors, and the IEEE EDS Chapter of the year award, etc.
