The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering congratulates Professor Junichiro Kono who will become full professor in July 2009.  He joined Rice University in 2000 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and rose to Associate Professor in 2005, and in 2009 he received a joint appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Current research in the Kono Laboratory focuses on the fundamental physics of semiconductor nanostructures and carbon nanomaterials.  Using state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques, his research group investigates various optical and terahertz processes in a variety of nanostructures.  Recent accomplishments include ultrafast optical manipulation of ferromagnetism in semiconductors, magnetic brightening of “dark” excitons in carbon nanotubes, and generation of coherent lattice vibrations in carbon nanotubes.  These studies can lead to innovative semiconductor ‘opto-spintronic’ devices for controlling magnetism by light as well as for filling the terahertz ‘technology gap’ that exists between electronics and photonics.  Such devices can become the fundamental building-blocks for future technology such as optical quantum information processing, which can have tremendous impact on information technology by revolutionizing the way we process and store information.  Furthermore, these systems can provide a controlled environment in which to address unanswered basic questions in many-body physics.