YSM Issue 93.2

ALUMNI ALUMNI
PROFILE
From his humble upbringings in Taiwan to his
current position as Vice President of Science and
Technology in the Research Division at IBM, Tze-
Chiang Chen (PhD ’85) has established himself as one of
the most influential researchers in electrical engineering.
Born in 1951 to two teachers, Chen has maintained his
scientific curiosity since childhood. “I always wanted to
make something work by using mechanical, electrical, or
optical components,” Chen said. “That is what inspired
me to study science and technology.”
He used his childhood interests in science to pursue both
a bachelor’s (’74) and master’s degree (’76) in physics at
the National Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan, and paid
special attention to particle physics for his MS degree. After
serving in the army for two years, Chen then received a
scholarship from Yale to study physics. “Not only did Yale
have a very strong particle physics team, but it also had a
long history with China,” Chen said. “It was a dream to
come to Yale.” Chen arrived in 1978, receiving a master’s
degree a year later in Engineering and Applied Science and
pursuing the field until he graduated with a PhD in 1985.
Chen has worked on many impressive projects over
the years. While at Yale, around 1980, Chen was offered
an opportunity to work at PerkinElmer, a company
commissioned by NASA to help develop the Hubble
Space Telescope. Consequently, Chen drove between
New Haven and Wilton, Connecticut for nine months
as he balanced his studies and research work, ultimately
developing a process that allowed for the mirror coatings
used on the Hubble project. Thanks in part to his effective
contributions, the Hubble Space Telescope launched in
1990 and is still in operation today. For Chen, this first
work project still occupies a special place among all his
achievements. “I solved a problem and designed all the
thin-film coating parameters… It is perhaps the project I
am most proud of today,” he said.
Chen continued to solve problems and design parameters
when he joined the IBM team in late 1984 as a research
staff member. “IBM was known to be an innovation
company, and it provided a great opportunity for pioneering
semiconductor research,” he said. In fact, Chen’s primary
focus was on semiconductors, materials that partially
conduct current and are essential for many electrical
IMAGE COURTESY OF TZE-CHIANG CHEN
devices. His groundbreaking work during the eighties
on double-poly bipolar technology production laid the
foundation for semiconductor devices being implemented
in IBM mainframe computers used worldwide for scientific,
banking, and other commercial applications. Throughout
the nineties, Chen advanced dynamic random-access
memory (DRAM) density, allowing semiconductors to
store more data efficiently. And at the turn of the twentyfirst
century, Chen led a team of researchers in innovating
a dielectric material for complementary metal–oxide–
semiconductor (CMOS) chips, which store small amounts
of memory on computers. This work resulted in a global
push for silicon microelectronic use at many semiconductor
companies. Since joining IBM thirty-five years ago, Chen
remains an indispensable part of the company, overseeing
the science and technology strategy for five laboratories
across the world and continuing to monitor multinational
work on other engineering projects.
Chen has accumulated many accolades throughout
the years, receiving IBM’s highest honor when he was
appointed to be a fellow for the company in 1999. He later
became a fellow for the American Physical Society and the
IEEE. In 2011, Chen received the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Ernest Weber award for his
high managerial achievement.
Underlying Chen’s ambitions to come to Yale was an
admiration for Yung Wing, a Yale graduate of 1854 who
was the first Chinese student to receive a diploma from
an American university. Given his illustrious career,
it comes as no surprise that Chen was named Asian
American Engineer of the Year in 2005.
“I want to encourage Yale undergraduate students
to engage more in science and technology, given Yale’s
enormous amount of resources,” Chen said, when asked
to offer some advice to current Yale students. He also
advised students to persist in the face of science’s many
challenges. “[View hurdles] as an opportunity rather
than a barrier… Through passion and perseverance, you
can achieve something that makes you happy,” he said.
Once a recruiter for IBM, Chen now returns
occasionally to Yale’s campus—when he’s here, he can
typically be found at the Becton Center. If you’re lucky,
perhaps one day you’ll meet him! ■
BY NADEAN ALNAJJAR
TZE-CHIANG CHEN (PHD ’85)
www.yalescientific.org
September 2020 Yale Scientific Magazine 31