Juzer Vasi

Juzer Vasi has spent half a century teaching and researching semiconductors, the material at the heart of every chip and solar cell. In 2026 he was named for the Padma Shri in the field of science and engineering, from Maharashtra ^[1].

Career

Vasi was born in Mumbai on 25 August 1947 ^[2]. He graduated from IIT Bombay in 1969 and earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in the US in 1973 ^[2]. He taught at IIT Delhi from 1974 and moved to IIT Bombay’s electrical engineering department in 1981, where he became professor in 1983, head of department and later deputy director ^[2]. He retired in 2015 and has been professor emeritus since 2017 ^[2].

Chips

In 1983 he and colleagues started one of India’s first postgraduate programmes in microelectronics at IIT Bombay ^[2]. Many of his students now lead companies in India and abroad ^[2]. In the 1990s his group worked on radiation-hardened CMOS chips for space use ^[2]. In the 2000s he helped set up, with IISc, national centres of excellence in nanoelectronics, and a programme that opened IIT Bombay’s labs to researchers from across India ^[2].

Sunlight

In 2010, at the request of the government’s Principal Scientific Adviser, he moved into solar photovoltaics and co-founded the National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education at IIT Bombay ^[2]. He then led the work to run the National Salt Satyagraha Memorial at Dandi on solar power, and IIT Bombay became the design coordinator for the memorial, completed in 2019 ^[2].

He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and won the IEEE Simon M. Sze Education Award in 2025 ^[2].