Thomas N. Jackson, Ph.D.
Thomas N. Jackson is the Robert E. Kirby Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State University. Dr. Jackson joined the faculty in the Electrical Engineering department at Penn State University in 1992 after twelve years at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Jackson’s research focuses on exploratory electronic devices and micro-fabrication techniques. His current areas of interest include organic and molecular electronics, thin film electronics, bio-molecular motors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and display technology. Dr. Jackson’s group at Penn State demonstrated the first high mobility organic thin film transistors (OTFTs), the first OTFT with mobility and the first use of a SAM-treated dielectric to improve OTFT performance, the first OTFTs with temperature independent mobility, OTFTs with chemically modified source and drain contacts, and the first low temperature, high mobility solution processed OTFTs. Dr. Jackson’s group has also demonstrated OTFT driven LCD and OLED displays and a range of other thin film devices and circuits. Dr. Jackson has been married for 29 years, has two sons, and is active in his local church. He is the author or co-author of more than 250 publications and 25 U.S. patents. Dr. Jackson is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and a member of the American Vacuum Society, the Electrochemical Society, the Materials Society, and the Society for Information Display.
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Michael McGehee, Ph.D.
Michael McGehee graduated from Princeton University with a degree in physics (1994) after researching mesostructure self assembly with Sol Gruner and Ilhan Aksay. He received a PhD (1999) from the University of California-Santa Barbara for his research with Alan Heeger on the use of semi conducting conjugated polymers as materials for lasers and light-emitting diodes. After graduating, he studied the co-assembly of block-copolymer/metal-oxide nanostructures in the research groups of Galen Stucky and Brad Chmelka. In the spring of 2000, he joined the faculty of Stanford University’s Materials Science and Engineering Department. McGehee won the MRS Graduate Student Gold Medal Award (1999), A Dupont Young Professor Award (2001), and an NSF CAREER Award (2001). He was a Gilbreth Lecturer at the National Academy of Engineering’s 2006 Annual Meeting. In 2007 McGhee won the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

At Stanford, McGehee has led a group of students who make ordered organic-inorganic bulk heterojunction solar cells, studying the electronic processes that occur in them. His group also studied the effects of molecular packing on charge transport in polymer field effect transistors, and developed methods for improving light extraction from polymer light-emitting diodes. He teaches classes on nanotechnology, polymer science, organic electronics, and solar cells.
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H. Holden Thorp, Ph.D.
H. Holden Thorp graduated from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill in 1986. Thorp went on to obtain his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1989, and his Postdoctoral Associate from Yale University in 1990. Thorp has received numerous awards and honors including the Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement (1996), CED Life Science Technology of the Year (2000), Fortune Small Business Top Innovator (2001), and UNC Distinguished Young Alumnus (2002). Thorp is currently the Kenan Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill.
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