Biography
Robert J. Mattauch joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA, in September of 1966. He immediately founded UVa’s Semiconductor Device Laboratory establishing, for the first time in Virginia, a microelectronics program at a university. He and his graduate students began research on millimeter wave semiconductor devices for radio astronomy applications in 1969. In 1971, their work yielded devices which were known internationally to exhibit the highest sensitivity in the millimeter wave range (100 GHz). By 1973, devices resulting from this research were used exclusively in the vast majority of radio telescopes around the world. In 1976, Mattauch and his graduate students began work on devices designed for detection of chlorine monoxide, the compound responsible for the disassociation of ozone molecules, and were a part of the JPL led research team to perform the first bench-mark measurement of the concentration of chlorine monoxide, ClO, in the stratosphere. Semiconductor devices from his research have been used in all NASA measurements of indication of stratospheric ozone layer depletion to the time of this resume. Until 1980, Mattauch was the only faculty member in the semiconductor device area and consequently taught all undergraduate and graduate courses. He supervised a team of as many as eight graduate students, and served as principal investigator on as many as nine research grants/contracts at one time. In his time at UVa, Mattauch served as thesis and technical advisor to over 50 M.S. and Ph.D. students.