Illustration of the Japanese-US engineer Shuji Nakamura (born 1954). Nakamura studied at the University of Tokushima, graduating in 1977. He worked for the Nichia Corporation in Tokushima. By 1993 he had invented the gallium nitride (GaN) LED (light-emitting diode) that emits a bright blue light that is the basis of energy-saving white LED lighting. He left Nichia in 1999, and since then has been Professor, Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he is Director of the Solid State Lighting and Display Center. In 2014, he was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on blue LED technology.