Academia Sinica is pleased to announce that Academician Chen-Ming Hu was awarded the 2020 IEEE Medal of Honor by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in December 2019, in recognition of his prominent contributions to enhancing transistor performance and reducing its size.

Academician Hu invented FinFET and FD-SOI, two revolutionary innovations that achieved breakthroughs in semiconductor device fabrication. With many major semiconductor manufacturers now having adopted FinFET technology, wafer size has been made even smaller.

In addition to serving as Chief Technology Officer at TSMC, Dr. Hu was elected National Academy of Engineering Member, IEEE Fellow, Elected Member of the World Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2016, he received the National Technology and Innovation Medal from United States President Barack Obama, and was later named Industrial Technology Research Institute Laureate that November. Dr. Hu currently serves as Professor at UC Berkeley and National Chiao Tung University. He was elected Academia Sinica Academician in 2004.

The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It is awarded to only one individual each year, and is viewed as the greatest glory in field of electrical and electronic engineering. Morris Chang, founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and leading figure in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, also won this award in 2011.