Biography

Paul R. Berger (S’84 M’91 SM’97 F’11) is a Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Ohio State University and Physics (by Courtesy). He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tampere University in Finland. He received the B.S.E. in engineering physics, and the M.S.E. and Ph.D. (1990) in electrical engineering, respectively, all from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Currently, Dr. Berger is actively working on quantum tunneling devices, printable semiconductor devices & circuits for IoT, bioelectronics, novel devices, novel semiconductors and applied physics.

Formerly, he worked at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (1990-’92) and taught at the University of Delaware in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1992-2000). In 1999, Prof. Berger took a sabbatical leave while working first at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany and then moved on to Cambridge Display Technology, Ltd., Cambridge, United Kingdom. In 2008, Prof. Berger spent an extended sabbatical leave at IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center) in Leuven, Belgium while appointed as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Prof. Berger was also a Finnish Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro) at Tampere University of Technology (2014-2019), and he continued as a Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies (2020-2022) with the newly merged Tampere University. Now he remains engaged with Tampere University as a Docent (Visiting Professor), leading a 4-year Research Council of Finland project (2022-2026), and Work Package leader on a European Commission project (2023-2027).

Berger hosted as General Chair the 2021 IFETC (IEEE International Flexible Electronics Technology Conference) and is the Founding Editor-in-Chief for the new IEEE Journal on Flexible Electronics, and Editor-in-Chief (2023-2024; 2025-2027). In addition, he is an elected member-at-large to the IEEE EDS Board of Governors (19’-24’), where he was the seminal Vice President of Strategic Directions (20’-21’). Berger is also a core part of the IEEE EDS Strategic Planning team in 2022 and the EDS Ad Hoc Materials Initiative Committee. Berger is also the EDS Steering Committee representive to IEEE Brain and IEEE Quantum, as well as EDS representive to IEEE TAB Ad Hoc Committee on Climate Change (2022-2023); IEEE TAB Committee on Diversity and Inclusion Committee (2022); and IEEE Women in Engineering Committee (2022-2023).

He has authored over 240 referred publications and presentations with another ~100 plenary, keynote, invited talks, 5 book sections and been issued 25 patents with a Google Scholar H-index of 40. Some notable recognitions for Dr. Berger were an NSF CAREER Award (1996), a DARPA ULTRA Sustained Excellence Award (1998), Lumley Research Awards (2006, 2011), a Faculty Diversity Excellence Award (2009) and Outstanding Engineering Educator for State of Ohio (2014). He has been on the Program and Advisory Committees of numerous conferences, including the IEDM, DRC, ISDRS, EDTM, IFETC and LOPEC meetings.

Berger is Vice Chair, Columbus Chapter (elected 2021-2022; 2023-2024; 2025-2026), which won 2022 MGA Outstanding Medium Section Award. He currently is the Chair of the Columbus IEEE EDS/Photonics Chapter and Faculty Advisor to Ohio State’s IEEE Student Chapter.

Berger is an IEEE Fellow (since 2011), IEEE EDS Distinguished Lecturer and a Senior member of Optica (formerly Optical Society of America).

Berger has active solar humanitarian engineering projects in Colombia, Navajo Nation (AZ), and Molokai, Hawaii, as well as a former set of projects in Haiti and Tanzania.

Altogether, his USA research funding received $38.1M and his European funding received €15.7M with an aggregate > $54.9M USD.