Title: Gallium Nitride; past, present and future in an ever-changing market

Bio: Umesh K. Mishra is the Richard A. Auhll Dean of the College of Engineering, and the Donald W. Whittier Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. He received his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, his M.S from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA., and his Ph.D. in 1984 from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He has supervised 80 Ph.D theses to completion with 15 of them being women and 69 of them in the field of Gallium Nitride (GaN) materials and devices. He co-founded the first start-up in the world to commercialize RF GaN transistors and LEDs in 1996 (Nitres) which was acquired by CREE (now Wolfspeed) in 2000. Umesh co-founded Transphorm in 2007 to commercialize GaN transistors for power conversion which was acquired by Renesas in 2024. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, an International Fellow of the Japanese Society of Applied Physics, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Kanpur. He has received several awards for developing GaN electronics including the IEEE Jun-Ichi Nishizawa Medal in 2022.

Title: Chuo Sinkansen with Superconducting Maglev and Semiconductor Power Conversion

Junichi KITANO received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1980 and 1982 respectively, and withdrew from doctoral course in 1985. Until 1989, he worked as a research associate in the same institute. In 1989, he joined Central Japan Railway Company and has been engaged in research and development of superconducting maglev system. Presently he is a general engineering manager of Maglev Systems Development Division. His research interests include high power conversion system, drive control system, and wireless power transmission. Also, he worked about Electro-Magnetic Compatibility and he is a member of Japanese national committee of IEC TC/77, IEC/77A and IEC/TC9. He is a past chairman of the Linear Drive Technical Committee of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEE Japan). And he received the IEE Japan Industry Applications Society Technical Development Award for the practical application of superconducting maglev system. He is a fellow of IEE Japan.