Our Bureau
Santa Barbara, CA
On March 20, 2025 Umesh Mishra, dean of the College of Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara has been honored with the 2025 Central Coast Innovation Awards at the annual awards event hosted by the Pacific Coast Business Times. The event took place at the Santa Barbara Hilton hotel.
The Central Coast Innovation Awards recognize the emerging technology in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties. This event, hosted by Pacific Coast Business Times in partnership with UCSB CNSI, celebrates the Central Coast as a distinct innovation hub and highlights the region’s entrepreneurs.
Umesh Mishra, dean of the College of Engineering, professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, entrepreneur, and world-renowned expert on the semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) and its role in power electronics, has received this prestigious Innovation Award.
Mishra, who became the eighth dean of the COE in 2023 after thirty-three years at UCSB, is a true innovator. He has co-founded two companies — Nitres, in 1996, the first to develop GaN-based LEDs and transistors. It was acquired by Cree, now Wolfspeed. Transphorm, his other company, was founded in 2007, specializes in GaN-based high-voltage power conversion applications, and has generated more than one thousand patents and applications. The company went public in 2020.
Mishra has brought that same innovative spirit to the dean’s office, generating new programs to benefit staff and faculty and continuing to serve as a friendly and approachable leader who is always ready to stop for a few words with faculty, students, or staff.
Mishra’s areas of research include: development of GaN electronics, GaN opto-electronics, GaN materials, oxide-based electronics, non-stoichiometric semiconductors, vacuum microelectronics, and Inp & GaAs based electronics.
Mishra is member of National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, National Academy of Inventors.
Mishra has earned PhD in Electrical Engineering, Cornell University, MS in Electrical Engineering, Lehigh University and B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering, Indian Institutes of Technology Kanpur.
