Heike E. Riel

Major contributor to the development of the world's largest-ever (20") full-color amorphous-silicon active-matrix display based on organic light-emitting diodes, presented in May 2003, Riel has served as Manager of the Materials Integration & Nanoscale Devices (MIND) group at IBM Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland. She has been responsible for projects in the area of semiconducting nanowires for various applications and molecular electronics. Her research has focused on new materials and novel device concepts for future nanoelectronics, in particular steep slope devices for energy efficient computation.

Riel left a furniture-making apprenticeship to study Physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and received a Ph.D. from the University of Bayreuth (Germany) in 2003 for her work on the optimization of multilayer organic light-emitting devices. In 2011, she graduated with an M.B.A. degree from Henley Business School. After an internship at the Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, she joined the IBM Zurich Research Lab in 1998 as a Ph.D. student and became a Research Staff Member in 2003. From 2008, she led the Nanoscale Electronics Group.

Her 20-inch screen was brighter and more energy efficient than any other screen on the market. Riel's breakthrough achievements include advances in semiconducting nanowires for devices beyond conventional Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors (CMOS), in molecular electronics for future nanoscale switches and memory applications, and in organic light-emitting diodes as a disruptive display technology. Her distinguished work, worldwide scientific impact, and technical leadership have significantly advanced IBM's reputation as a leader in nanotechnology. She has served as technology ambassador to South Africa.

For her outstanding scientific contributions, she was elected by Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation, to the TR100, the annual list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators, in September 2003, and she received the 2005 Applied Physics Award of the Swiss Physical Society. In June 2012, Riel received an award in the category "Technical or Scientific Innovation" from the Swiss Association of Women in Engineering (SVIN) on the occasion of their 20th anniversary. In 2013, she was named IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical distinction.

She has authored or co-authored several publications in her field, the most recent of which were: "Vertical III-V Nanowire Device Integration on Si(100)", with M. Borg, H. Schmid, K. E. Moselund, G. Signorello, L. Gignac, J. Bruley, C. Breslin, P. Das Kanungo, and P. Werner, Nano Letters 14(4), 2014; "Using the Seebeck coefficient to determine charge carrier concentration, mobility, and relaxation time in InAs nanowires", with V. Schmidt, P. F. J. Mensch, S. F. Karg, B. Gotsmann, P. Das Kanungo, H. Schmid, and Applied Physics Letters 104, 012113, 2014; "Nanoelectrical Imaging of Graphene in Liquids Materials Today", with P. N. Nirmalraj, Materials Today, accepted, including cover picture, 2014; and "Inducing a Direct-to-Pseudodirect Bandgap Transition in Wurtzite GaAs Nanowires with Uniaxial Stress", with G. Signorello, E. Lörtscher, P. A. Khomyakov, S. Karg, D. L. Dheeraj, B. Gotsmann, H. Weman, Nature Communications 5, 3655, 2014.