About the Author Karl Hess holds the Swanlund Endowed Chair and is professor of electrical and computer engineering and of physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Hess has dedicated a major portion of his research to electronic transport in semiconductors and semiconductor devices, with particular emphasis on hot electron effects and effects pertinent to device miniaturization. He is particularly interested in problems that require large computational resources for their solution. Dr. Hess' current research at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois is in the area of molecular and electronic nanostructures. He has received numerous awards, including the 1993 IEEE J. J. Ebers Award of the Electron Devices Society and the 1995 IEEE David Sarnoff Field Award for Electronics. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.