Arpad A. Bergh

Arpad A. Bergh, founder and president of Optoelectronics Industry Development (OIDA), was awarded the Robert E. Hopkins Leadership Award in 2007 for his leadership role in establishing and leading the Optoelectronic Industries Development Association and making it the primary advocate for the optoelectronics industry in the US.

Bergh was born on 26 April 1930 in Cegled, Hungary. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 in Physical Chemistry. From 1959-1966, he was with Bell Laboratories in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he worked on the development of semiconductor devices and on various aspects of MOS technology. In 1966, he was transferred to Murray Hill, New Jersey to supervise the development of GaP electroluminescent devices. Two years later he became head of the Compound Semiconductor Materials and Devices Development Department, responsible for lasers, LEDs, photodetectors, and microwave devices. 

When Bellcore was formed in 1983, Bergh became Division Manager of the Device Science and Technology Research Division, conducting research in photonic devices, gallium-arsenide high-speed circuits, and display devices. He retired from Bellcore in September 1994 as the Executive Director of the Applied Research Program Development Department and became full time president of OIDA.

He held 11 patents and authored over 20 papers on semiconductor materials and devices. He co-authored the book Light-emitting Diodes (Electrical & Electronic Engineering Monographs) published by Oxford Press in 1976 and the chapter “Technology Roadmap for Optical Communication – A North American Perspective” in the book Femtosecond Technology: From Basie Research to Application Prospects published in 1994 and edited by O. Wada of Fujitsu Laboratories. Bergh was a Fellow of IEEE and a member of OSA, The Electrochemical Society, Society Information Display, New York Academy of Sciences and the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.