Brief Bio

Professor Lorenzo Faraone,
BE PhD, SMIEEE, FTSE

Professor Faraone was born in Delianuova, PRC, Italy. From 1977-1978 he was an Associate Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He then went overseas and was a Research Scientist at the Lehigh University, USA from 1979-1980. From 1980-1986 he was Member of Technical Staff, RCA Laboratories, Princeton, USA. In 1986 he returned to Australia and from 1986 -1993 was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. He then headed back overseas in 1993 to take a position as a Visiting Professor at the Leuven University in Belgium. In 1997 returned to the United States as a Visiting Professor at the University of California. From 1993-1998 he was an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia, then from 1999-2003 Head of Dept/School of EE&CE at the University of Western Australia. Currently he holds two appointments, one as Professor at the University of Western Australia and secondly he is the Director at the WA Centre for Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Microsystems (WACSOM).

Professor Faraone’s areas of research and industrial experience cover Si, GaAs, HgCdTe, AlGaN/GaN and Optical MEMS device physics and modelling, device fabrication technology and reliability, and electrical and physical characterisation of semiconductor materials and device structures. Areas of expertise include: electrical properties of defects and deep-level impurities in semiconductors; tunnelling effects in semiconductor device structures; physics and reliability aspects of non-volatile memories; radiation effects in MOS devices; GaAs fabrication technology and device physics; HgCdTe infrared materials, detector technology and reliability; AlGaN/GaN device physics; Optical MEMS technology. Six years (1981-1986) of industrial experience at the RCA Corporation, David Sarnoff Research Center, Princeton, NJ, USA, including two years as Project Leader responsible for the development of VLSI CMOS technologies for non-volatile memory applications and one year as Principal Investigator of research team working on space radiation effects in silicon MOS integrated circuits. He is head of the Microelectronics Research Group (MRG), which currently consists of 13 academic and research staff, and 15 postgraduate PhD students. The MRG attracts extensive research funding, including 6 concurrent Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grants, 4 research contracts from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), as well as a number of industrial contracts, and a USD$ multi-million US DARPA contract as part of the Adaptive Focal Plane Array (AFPA) Program. In 2003, the MRG was successful in establishing an AUD$2.5 million Nanofabrication Facility as part of the State Government Centres of Excellence Program.

Professor Faraone currently holds eight US patents and 3 current patent applications, has supervised more than 25 postgraduate student completions, and published more than 200 refereed technical papers.