Axel Scherer is the Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Scherer's office is located in the Sloan Annex, and his lab manager is Kate Finigan. He is known for fabricating the world's first semiconducting vertical cavity laser at Bell Laboratories.[1] In 2006, Dr. Scherer was named the director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He graduated from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985.
Axel Scherer is a co-inventor of the semiconductor Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) along with Jack Jewell.
He is also co-founder and an advisor to Luxtera, a California manufacturer of photonics devices.[2]
He is also co-founder and an advisor to Helixis, a California manufacturer of molecular diagnostic devices.[3]