Prof. Shuji Nakamura is widely known as the Thomas Edison in the LED industry since he successfully developed the high-brightness blue LED based on GaN for the first time in the world in 1993 when he was working for Nichia Corporation in Japan. In those days, it was regarded to be impossible to develop the blue LED in the 20th century. Whereas only red and green LED were available for over 20 years, the development of blue LED by Prof. Nakamura allowed LED manufacturers to produce LEDs with three primary colors (red, green and blue), expressing some 16 million colors. And the LED industry could successfully begin commercial production of white LED, the semiconductor light source of dream, leveraging the new technology.

In recognition of his achievements, Prof. Shuji Nakamura is emerging as a candidate for the next Nobel Prize, and he won in 2006 the "Millennium Technology Prize" of Finland, which is called as the Nobel Prize in technology field. In 2004, he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in the engineering segment, the same medal that was awarded to Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein. He also won "The Economist's Innovation Award" which was given to 6 scientists of the world who made outstanding contribution to innovation of technologies.

As a professor at the Material Department and co-director of the solid state lighting and energy center (SSLEC) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Prof. Nakamura is currently leading efforts on developing the next-generation LED and LD based on the blue LED as well as GaN-based solar cell. Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. is proud to be one of the industrial sponsors of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center. He also began official activities as a scientific advisor for Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (represented by Chung Hoon Lee, www.acriche.com), a leading LED manufacturer in Korea. His consulting will lead Seoul Semiconductor's bright future. Buoyed by energy-saving and green environment policies of many countries, GaN-based white LED developed by Prof. Nakamura takes the central spot light in the global wave of replacing existing lighting apparatuses.