Dr. Scherer is professor of electrical engineering, applied physics, and physics, specializing in device microfabrication and packaging. He graduated from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985, and has worked in the Quantum Device Fabrication group at Bellcore for the following 8 years. In the past, Dr. Scherer has specialized on improving the state of the art of semiconductor microfabrication, which resulted in the development of the smallest vertical cavity lasers (400 nm wide), some of the world's smallest etched structures (6 nm wide) as well as ultra-narrow gratings (30 nm pitch). He has also been working on reducing the sizes of microlasers and changing their emission wavelengths. Dr. Scherer's research laboratory is built around producing nanostructures and applying them to new optoelectonic, magneto-optic and high-speed electronic devices. The aim of his research group is to develop functional devices which use their reduced geometries to obtain higher speed, greater efficiencies, and can be integrated into systems in large numbers.