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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Bantval Jayant Baliga is this year's winner of the Millennium Technology Prize.</li><li>He won the award for inventing the IGBT, a device that has helped lower carbon emissions.</li></ul>Just a few years after Bantval Jayant Baliga started working at General Electric in the 1970s, word of a discovery he made went all the way to CEO <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-neutron-jack-fired-thousands-made-trump-broke-capitalism-2022-5">Jack Welch</a>.As an electrical engineer at the time, the now 76-year-old Baliga had developed the beginnings of what's known as an insulated-gate bipolar transistor, or IGBT. It promised to make electrical devices a whole lot more efficient. Greater efficiency would mean bigger cost savings.So once Welch, the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-welch-leadership-lesson-2018-3">towering leader of the American conglomerate</a>, caught wind of an idea with the potential to reduce his costs, he was ready to be pitched. "In half an hour, I convinced him this is a great idea," Baliga tells Business Insider.Since then, his invention of the IGBT semiconductor device has made its way into the wider world of electronics, delivering electrical efficiency and helping reduce carbon emissions in everything from medical devices and consumer appliances to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/plug-in-hybrid-prices-soaring-demand-electric-cars-2024-9">hybrid electric vehicles.</a>In 2016, it helped earn him a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Now he's become the latest recipient of the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://millenniumprize.org/">Millennium Technology Prize</a> — a 1 million euro ($1.1 million) award presided over by the president of Finland that spotlights innovations beneficial to society."It's like a capstone for my career," he says.<div type="image" title="Professor Bantval Jayant Baliga." height="5063" width="3375" msid="113064831" hostid="261" sizebytes="1094492"></div>Baliga's career started as an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, where — like so many others of his time — he became enthralled with the legendary lectures delivered by physicist <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/20-physicists-revolutionized-understanding-world-2016-9">Richard Feynman</a> in California in the 1960s."It was not in my curriculum, but in our bookstore," he said. "I used to read when other students were going to the movies. It just inspired me."From there, a doctorate in electrical engineering in the US led to an initial role at General Electric, where he spent his time working in the world of transistors and thyristors at a time when the semiconductor industry was "already considered very mature," Baliga recalls.<h2 id="62aab9d7-0dc2-4e6c-954f-52618818ea5d">Fast track</h2>Though that meant a big breakthrough would be tough to come by, he was full of ideas that could have a huge impact, particularly on how electrical efficiency could be improved in the full roster of products his employer was working on. After his pitch to Welch, Baliga was given the rare opportunity to fast-track a nascent idea from a research phase straight into manufacturing on a production line in California.Concern about global warming then was far less acute. However, it later became clear that reducing the electrical consumption of devices with IGBTs — found in everything from CAT scanners and microwaves to refrigeration and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/riding-japans-bullet-trains-between-tokyo-kyoto-2023-7">Japan's bullet trains</a> — would have a huge positive downstream impact on carbon emissions.<div type="image" title="bullet train" height="2125" width="3200" msid="113064833" hostid="261" sizebytes="182966"></div>By Baliga's own calculations, IGBTs have helped reduce global carbon emissions by more than 82 gigatons, or 180 trillion points, between 1990 and 2020 through reduced electrical energy and fuel consumption."Two-thirds of the electricity in the world is used to run motors in consumer and industrial applications," says Professor Päivi Törmä, chair of the International Selection Committee of the Millennium Technology Prize. "Professor Baliga's innovation has allowed us to develop societies with electricity efficiently, while dramatically reducing energy consumption."Baliga, who has worked as a professor at North Carolina State University since his time at General Electric, knows there's more work to be done to ensure the world of electronics and semiconductors reduces electricity consumption.In particular, Baliga sees the world of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/ais-rapid-growth-threatens-energy-industry-economy-and-climate-1033552538">artificial intelligence</a>, which has seen a huge burst of growth in recent years, consuming a lot of power.<h2 id="31e59015-9f9b-47b1-8ffd-63be68e7b785">Staying true</h2>In July, for instance, Google revealed that its <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2024-environmental-report.pdf">total greenhouse gas emissions had increased</a> 48% since 2019, something it put down to "increased data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions." Baliga and his team, then, are working on new inventions to improve "power delivery for AI servers."As he looks back on half a century of work, he recalls that his award-winning invention would not have come to be had he not stayed true to a note he made in his application to attend university in the US: "Develop a technology that would benefit mankind.""That's a naive idea for a young 21-year-old, but it actually came true so how about that," Baliga says. "So my encouragement for young people: be ambitious but do something that is socially beneficial as well."The Millennium Technology Prize will be presented to Professor Baliga on October 30 in a ceremony in Finland that also marks its 20th anniversary. Past winning innovations range from DNA sequencing that helped to develop COVID-19 vaccines, to ethical stem-cell research and versatile, affordable smart technology.

Meet the professor who just won the Millennium Technology Prize — and $1.1 million

<keyword id="3519744" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Jayant-Baliga">Jayant Baliga</keyword>, the electrical engineer who is best known for his work in power semiconductor devices, has a lot of other achievements that he can justifiably claim to take pride in. The list, however, is topped by a theory that related the properties of semiconductor materials to the performance of power devices, way back in 1979. 
 
The theory resulted in an equation that bears his name, using which engineers can predict the outcome of replacing silicon with other materials. 
 
Baliga was then working at GE, and had got a small team to work on gallium arsenide, a well-studied material. However, his global fame was to come for a different reason. He had also invented the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) around the same time. The device combined the virtues of two other kinds of transistors. 
It was because of using IGBT that power devices multiplied all around the world, and on an estimate, the device is supposed to have saved the world $24 trillion because of improved energy efficiencies. The uses range from electric cars to household appliances. 
 
Baliga won several awards because of this invention, including the prestigious Global Energy Prize, with his name being mentioned in some science circles as a potential Nobel Prize winner. 
 However, his original equation is what still sits in his mind, as it predicted that a material called <keyword id="1437475" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="silicon-carbide">silicon carbide</keyword> will be a hundred times more efficient than silicon. Even though the said material was not well understood then, things have significantly improved since the 1980s. 
 Baliga now serves as the director of the Power Semiconductor Research Centre in <keyword id="283601" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="North-Carolina-State-University">North Carolina State University</keyword>, and is putting efforts in developing silicon carbide devices that can be used in commercial applications. 
 Yes, even if it means killing his own invention, the <keyword id="3520416" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="IGBTs">IGBTs</keyword>. 
 
"I told them that we would replace the IGBT eventually," Baliga told <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/meet-jayant-baliga-the-inventor-of-igbt-who-is-working-to-kill-his-own-invention/articleshow/53424523.cms">ET</a> when he was in India to be the chief of guest of IIT Madras alumni night. "And since I am the father of both it doesn't feel so bad." 
 
Silicon carbide could one day replace IGBTs if they are successful, but its chips would cost more than IGBT chips, as much as ten times. Hence, the North Carolina State University is running a programme to bring this cost down to the level of IGBTs. 
 
<a href="https://research.ncsu.edu/results/files/2015/07/43-Baliga-small.jpg">Image source</a>

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Meet the professor who just won the Millennium Technology Prize — and $1.1 million

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