A professor at UC Santa Barbara, Herbert Kroemer, who won the prize in 2000, described seeing a bright blue LED for the first time in 1994 - and "suddenly," he said, "the world had changed." Kroemer heard Nakamura deliver a lecture in Berlin that same year. Nakamura showed images on an LED panel, and Kroemer turned to the colleague next to him and said, "What we are seeing here is the beginning of the end of the light bulb. We are not just talking about doing things better, but about doing things we never could before."

Kroemer was right, the applications and impact of Nakamura's inventions are far-reaching: from information and communication to energy and the environment, to health care and life sciences. "By making it possible to bring affordable, energy-efficient LED lighting to developing countries, Professor Nakamura has also made a tremendous humanitarian contribution to our world."

Click to learn more about Professor Nakamura and the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center that he helps lead.

The UCSB Office of Technology & Industry Alliances (TIA) exists to help establish both research and license agreements that inspire and support collaboration among university researchers and our industry partners. Our mission is to encourage and facilitate the use of university research results in commercial products that benefit the public. TIA builds a foundation for long-term, productive and mutually beneficial relationships between UCSB and its industry collaborators through its integrated management of both intellectual property licensing and research agreements.

UCSB's wide-ranging research strengths result in a robust patent portfolio available for licensing by industry, with everything from synthetic platelets to stop blood loss to blue LED technologies from 2014 Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura's lab. For assistance with sorting through the array of technologies to find the right fit for your company, you can contact TIA's Marketing Manager, Meaghan Shaw, at [email protected] or 805-893-2073 for a customized report of available technologies suited to your company's interests.

You can also sign up for periodic notifications about technologies available for licensing by clicking here . Selecting your industry and technology interests ensures that you'll only receive information on technologies in areas you specifically request. 

To browse currently available technologies or for more information on any of the topics mentioned above visit 

UC Santa Barbara's Master of Technology Management is a selective nine month, immersive master's degree program designed to catapult highly qualified, early-career engineers and scientists toward becoming leaders of technology ventures by developing skills to manage technical people, processes and products. 

Too often, talented engineers and scientists who aspire to be managers are faced with an unfortunate choice: either leave your technical field behind in order to grow as a general business manager, or continue developing technical expertise but abandon your goal of management. At UC Santa Barbara, we believe there is a third choice, a better choice. We've designed the Master of Technology Program to expose that false dichotomy, giving you the chance to pursue management opportunities within your technical field of expertise. The Master of Technology Management is like an MBA in that it teaches general business and management skills. 

It is unlike the MBA in that it is designed and taught by engineers and scientists exclusively for engineers and scientists who aspire to lead teams of engineers and scientists. We want students with the ambition, disposition and drive to succeed in our rigorous, immersive environment, people who are energized by a challenge and enjoy being pushed by ambitious, like-minded colleagues. 

For inquiries regarding hiring and internships please contact our Career Development Manager David Telleen-Lawton at [email protected].