The Bessemer Society has presented its Lifetime Fellowship Award to Dr Drew Nelson, co-founder and CEO of semiconductor supplier IQE plc.
The Award is presented each year to an entrepreneur who has shown the qualities that reflect the ethos of the Bessemer Society: ambition, perseverance, technical acumen, social-purpose, and leadership. Dr Nelson co-founded IQE in 1999, in Newport, South Wales. Since then it has grown under his leadership to become the leading global supplier of epitaxial wafers for compound semiconductor chips. The company operates manufacturing plants in the UK, USA and Asia. More recently it has established an additional foundry in Newport, in what is now becoming a Compound Semiconductor Valley in South Wales, which Dr Nelson has helped to mastermind by encouraging linkages between companies in the local value chain and universities under an initiative called CS Connected.
The importance of this new cluster can be understood by reference to the fact that many new emerging trends in technology, such as transport electrification, the electric charging infrastructure, the Internet of Things, 5G wireless, and quantum photonics depend on compound semiconductor chips.
The Award
The Lifetime Fellowship Award was made at a dinner held at the City of London Club on 20 November 2019. Dr Nelson received the Award from Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, the Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride and Director of Research in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge.
Dr Drew Nelson
Following a PhD in Semiconductor Physics, joined BT Research Laboratories in 1981, leading the group responsible for the development of advanced optoelectronic devices for optical fibre communications. He co-founded EPI in 1988 (which became IQE in 1999) and was appointed Chief Executive Officer of IQE Plc in April 1999.
