Academician Alfred Y. Cho will be inducted into the United States National Inventors Hall of Fame on May 2, 2009 at Silicon Valley, California for his invention of Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE).  MBE is a process in which materials are layered atop one another—atom-by-atom within a vacuum—with great precision to form devices like transistors and lasers. Switches and amplifiers in cell phones that carry our conversations over radio frequencies are made using Molecular Beam Epitaxy, as are most of the lasers used in CD/DVD players and drives. 

Dr. Cho was elected an Academician of Academia Sinica in 1990; he is the Adjunct Semiconductor Vice President of the Bell Labs., Alcatel-Lucent, U.S.A. His research field includes Electronic and Photonic Materials and Devices. Dr. Cho has been awarded the International Prize for New Materials of the American Physical Society (1982), Solid State Science and Technology Medal of The Electrochemical Society (1987), World Material Congress Award of ASM International (1988), Gaede-Langmuir Award of the American Vacuum Society (1988), International Crystal Growth Award of the American Association of Crystal Growth (1990), United States National Medal of Science (by President Clinton, 1993), Von Hippel Award of the Material Research Society (1994), The Medal of Honor of IEEE (1994), Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1995), Computer and Communications Prize of the C & C Foundation, Japan (1995), W.E. Lamb Medal for Laser Science and Quantum Optics(1999), and the United States National Medal of Technology (by President Bush, 2005) .

To honor the inventors who achieve the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible, the Selection Committee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation selects inventors for induction annually. The only other person of Chinese origin who has been inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame is Dr. A. Wang for his pioneering work on computers.