Miles of Memories: John Ayers Retires with Accolades
Associate Professor John Ayers’ career could be summarized in miles.
With two groundbreaking inventions that traveled the planet, numerous doctoral and master’s students mentored to move the industry forward world-wide, and several half marathons completed following an incredibly rare disease – one so rare it was named after him – Ayers looks at the miles logged behind him with gratefulness and humility.
His 34-year tenure in ECE encompassed thousands of research citations, hundreds of research papers, 27 research grants, eight teaching awards, 10 published books, and three new graduate courses.
“None of us aspire to this breadth of success, or enter into our careers thinking it could be possible,” Ayers said. “It shows that even an ordinary person can do the extraordinary.”
He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1990 and joined UConn’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department soon after.
Some of his achievements were singularly remarkable, such as the widespread adoption of his patterned heteroepitaxial processing invention for flat screens and infrared detectors, and the ensuing legal battle for the technology by a major consumer electronics company; the emergence of his Digital Integrated Circuits textbook as one of the top four worldwide; the development of the industry standard tool for modeling strain and defects in Silicon-Germanium (SiGe); the establishment of his research book, Heteroepitaxy of Semiconductors, as the leading authority in the field, and his invention of an electric circuit model for strain and defects in semiconductor heterostructures, which allows the application of well-established commercial circuit analysis tools to the modeling of graded and multi-layered epitaxial structures.
Ayers also served as associate department head and senior design coordinator for a number of years.
After the publication of Heteroepitaxy of Semiconductors brought him to the forefront of the field his graduate research group peaked at 10 members. His students were among the most prolific researchers and writers in the department, and one doctoral student had written 30 papers before his thesis defense.
He created three new graduate courses for these students, one at the master’s level and two at the doctoral level. He also enjoyed teaching the fundamentals to undergraduates, and brought in undergraduate researchers as well, but insisted they do graduate-level work to begin building their portfolio of journals and conference papers.
“I focused on trying to bring myself to think in the way of someone seeing it for the first time,” he said. “By bringing the concept to them in multiple ways, I was able to see the concepts in ways they might relate to.”
This work with undergraduates, in part, led to the breakthrough electrical circuit model he and a research student developed for strain and relaxation in semiconductor heterostructures.
Ayers believed the interplay between his research and teaching efforts helped to make him a better professor. He is also credited with developing the first online laboratory course at the University.
He was designated a University Teaching Fellow in 1999, the university’s highest teaching honor.
Later in his career, he began to receive consulting requests from the semiconductor industry. He created Epitax Engineering to serve this corporate need and established a productive relationship with the silicon industry. Epitax Engineering discovered breakthroughs in the modeling of strain and defects in SiGe structures, and eventually the establishment of the industry-standard tool for modeling strain and defects in SiGe.
Ayers credits his achievements to his mentors, including his mother Ruth B. Ayers, his father Professor George H. Ayers, and Professors Sorab Ghandhi and Ronald Gutmann.
“My mother showed me the importance of being meticulous, as I watched her prepare thousands of index cards for her genealogy and history research,” Ayers said. “My father had an infectious love of learning, which I witnessed in his writing and teaching.”
Ayers’ professional achievements are made more remarkable by the fact that he battled a rare, severely crippling, and incurable disease for the final third of his tenure.
The disease caused systemic inflammation in his bones, heart, marrow, and blood.
He became the first person to recover from more than 30 back fractures and run a half marathon in 2018.
He chronicled his battle against the disease in his 2018 memoir Runner, a book Ayers said students found inspirational.
“I will miss working with students, but it is certainly the right time to move on,” Ayers said. “My research will be continued on by others. It is a good feeling to be part of something bigger than myself.”
By Claire Tremont
Categories: News
Published: August 27, 2024
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