He was elected a
Fellow of the
American Physical Society in 1997 and a
Fellow of the
Institute of Physics (UK) in 2006. He won the
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel research award from the
Alexander von Humboldt Society in 2001. He served for 6 years as the Chair of the International Steering Committee of the ICDS conferences series and, also for 6 years, as the elected Spokesperson of the P.W. Horn Distinguished Professors at Texas Tech University. He has published over 200 scientific papers dealing with the electrical, optical, and magnetic properties of defects in
semiconductors. His studies of vibrational lifetimes revealed the concept of
phonon trapping which provides a natural explanation for why and how defects reduce heat flow. He was the first to calculate from first-principles the
Kapitza resistance and its temperature dependence at a semiconductor interface. He also published several articles on the
history of wine and
viticulture. == Family ==