WEI ZHU received his PhD in solid state science from Pennsylvania State University. He was a visiting assistant professor at North Carolina State University before he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories (later Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories) in 1993. He is currently a member of technical staff in the Applied Materials Research Department at Agere Systems, formerly the microelectronics group of Lucent Technologies, where he specializes in carbon-based materials and applications. His interests include novel cold cathode materials and devices, nanoscale materials and technology, MEMS, and optical waveguide materials and devices. He holds more than thirty patents and has coauthored over forty papers. He organized the first Materials Research Society symposium on vacuum microelectronics in 1998. He is a member of the Materials Research Society and the Optical Society of America.