Benjamin D.B. Klein has been appointed as associate chair for Graduate Affairs in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), effective January 1. He succeeds ECE Professor George F. Riley in this position.

“I’m looking forward to continuing the upward trajectory of our graduate research and education program here in ECE at Georgia Tech,” Klein said. “In particular, we will aggressively recruit a diverse group of the top graduate school applicants to join our program.”

Klein received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994, 1995, and 2000, respectively. From 2000-2003, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, working on semiconductor quantum dot-based devices. 

Klein first joined Georgia Tech as an ECE faculty member based at the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus in 2003, and in 2012, he transferred to the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. His research involves the theory, modeling, and design of semiconductor optoelectronic devices, including vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, LEDs, scintillator neutron detectors, and solar cells. This work has been funded by the U.S. Departments of Energy and Commerce, and by industry sponsors, including Canon, Inc.

Klein has served on the program committees for the Optics in the Southeast Conference and the Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices (NUSOD) Conference, which he co-hosted in 2010. He has served as the chair of the Optics and Photonics Technical Interest Group in the School of ECE since 2011.

Klein has written an online textbook titled Laser Photonics for use in ECE 4751–Laser Theory and Applications. In 2010, he received the Georgia Tech Class of 1940 W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award. Since 2016, he has been heavily involved in academic assessment activities for ABET and SACS accreditation, and he is a past member of the Institute’s Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.   

While at the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus, Klein was the faculty advisor of the IEEE student branch. Since coming to Atlanta, he has been involved in community outreach to elementary and middle school teachers in the Gwinnett County School System through a CEISMC program, and he has been involved in ECE's H.O.T. Days summer program with local high school students. Finally, Klein has a lovely singing voice, which he occasionally showcases at local karaoke establishments.