Shuji Nakamura (born May 22, 1954) is a Japanese-born American physicist and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology, professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB),and is regarded as the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology.He won Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2015 for the invention, development, and commercialization of materials and processes for light-emitting diodes (LEDs).