The Welker Award, initiated in 1976, is awarded annually by the International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS) Award committee, chaired this year by Prof. Yasuhiko Arakawa. Previous recipients (see the list) include three Nobel Laureates. The Award, established by Siemens AG, to honor pioneer Heinrich Welker, is currently sponsored by ams OSRAM.

Jean-Michel Gérard graduated from École Polytechnique (France) in 1985 and received his MSC (1986) and PhD (1990) from Paris VI University for his thesis entitled "Growth by molecular beam epitaxy of highly-strained InAs/GaAs semiconductor heterostructures and optical study of their electronic properties". From 1986 to 2001, he was Engineer of the French Ministry of Defense performing research within the France Telecom R&D laboratories and leading their research activities on quantum dots (QDs) from 1995. In 2001, he joined CEA in Grenoble as Head of the NPSC - Nanophysics and Semiconductors team, and from 2006, as Director of the Laboratory of Physics of Materials and Microstructures. In 2016, he became Founding Director of PHELIQS - Quantum Photonics, Electronics and Engineering, a position that he held until 2020.

Since his early studies (1984-95), Jean Michel Gérard has made pioneering contributions to the growth of Ill-arsenide nanostructures, including fabrication of short-period superlattices, investigation of segregation effects, and development of QD self-assembling. In 1994, he initiated with Jean-Yves Marzin optical studies on single self-assembled QDs. He has revealed their strong potential for quantum electrodynamics experiments in solid-state optical microcavities (1998) and photonic waveguides (2010). In 1998, he introduced the widely-used protocol harnessing radiative cascades in a single QD to generate single photons on demand, and demonstrated next the first single-mode single photon source in 2001. He has been recognized with the Great Prize Founded by the State awarded by the French Academy of Sciences (2005), the ISCS Quantum Devices Award (2008), and the Léon Brillouin Great Prize by the SFO - Société Française d'optique (2016).

Congratulations to Jean-Michel on this well-deserved recognition!

Dr. Jean-Michel Gérard (left) and Dr. Yasuhiko Arakawa (right) president of the 2024 award commitee.
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