Once a top physics student who aspired to study black holes,
Donhee Ham turned his sights from the huge to the small, from a
study of the spacious skies above to tiny quantum wires,
transistors, and integrated circuits. Ham, who was named Gordon
McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics in
July, designs silicon chips containing millions of transistors
for radios and computers, but his unique skills come out in
projects that blend circuit-building with physics for
unconventional applications and new scientific pursuits. Ham
built the world’s smallest nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
system by controlling atomic nucleic motions on a silicon chip,
for example. The system, 1,200 times lighter than a commercial
instrument, can be used as a handheld biomolecule sensor for
disease screening, oil detection, and quantum computing. “He’s
using his skill as an electrical engineer to go into other
fields and really make an impact,” said Robert Westervelt,
Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics and