I knew Mark since I joined Yale as an assistant professor in 2006. He is a staunch supporter of Junior faculty members in the department and propelled every stage of my career growth at Yale. Mark Reed is a visionary device physicist, and a forerunner in nanoscience and technology. Back in 1980s, he coined the term "quantum dots" to describe tiny nanostrutures that exhibit quantum confinement over all three dimensions. Today "quantum dots" are widely exploited in semiconductor lasers, telecommunication devices, biomedical imaging and drug delivery. He was a founding member of Yale's Institute of Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering (YINQE). Mark is a devoted educator and has carried a lion share of undergraduate teaching for the department. He shaped the EE curriculum for the past two decades including inaugurating half a dozen low level undergraduate courses. Mark's office is next to mine. So I got a chance to see all the students lined up in the Hallway waiting to meet with him. The hearty laughters he shared with students in his office are a signature of him and his positive humor touches generations of Yale students. Mark's sudden passing is an immeasurable loss for many of us. His laughter, his humor, and his wise advice will be deeply missed.

- Professor Hong Tang

I got to know Mark during my interview when he was the department chair. In one of his subsequent business trips he went out to Albuquerque, NM and invited me for a dinner in 2000, when he shared about how much he enjoyed his career at Yale. He was one of the main reasons for me to join Yale. After I moved to Yale and became settled on the 5th floor of Becton, one day he stopped by to chat and I pointed to him the nice overlook of the Grove Street Cemetery, he responded almost immediately: "Publish or perish!" While this appeared strong at the moment, gradually I learned that this matches his determination and intensity in research. During many sessions we had in supervising students as committee members, I am always impressed by his creativity and imagination. He is a superb, skillful experimentalist with a very rigorous standard. I can remember vividly in one meeting he said "rules are meant to be broken!" to a first-year graduate student. Such an attitude without rigid bounds propelled him to be very successful in quantum, nano, molecular electronics, and bio-electronics. His adventurous spirit in intellectual pursuit is very contagious and inspiring. Mark has been a wonderful colleague and will be greatly missed.

- Professor Jung Han

Mark Reed was many things - a first rate researcher, an entrepreneur, a departmental chair, a heavily committed and long serving director of undergraduate studies, a nice guy, a woodworker, and for some of us a poker buddy. Mark and I played poker together for years every other Monday night in a group which included at one time or another Bob Wheeler, Leon Lipson, David Swenson, Peter Gay, Bob Shulman, Stanley Flink, Frank Logue and many others. Mark was the youngest in the group. He was often a winner. During a difficult period when the Department was so understaffed that it could not teach all of its Yale College courses, Mark brought to Yale, Colonel Bob Sadowski from West Point’s teaching faculty to help us out - and Bob brought with him a genuine Enigma machine for all of us to marvel at. The loss of Mark Reed is profoundly felt by all of us.

I read Mark's papers on quantum confinement while I was a graduate student about 20 years ago. I also heard stories about Mark from my then colleagues (his former students) while I worked in IBM. I still remember the first time I met Mark in person when he gave a talk in IBM on silicon biosensors around 15 years ago. I was very much impressed by his distinctive talk and his warmness, and his texan style hat and boots were equally impressive which I can still recall after so many years.

I was so fortunate to become Mark's colleague in EE about 8 years ago. During my first year in Yale, I usually stayed late in my office because l lived alone in New Haven. I met Mark a few times after 10 pm in the alcove of the 5th floor of Becton. Mark was very kind and his encouragement made me confident about my future in Yale. We also discussed many possible collaborating opportunities.

Mark is a pioneer in quantum physics and nanotechnology, a great mentor for junior faculty members and a dedicated teacher for students. His passing is a tremendous loss to EE, Yale and the scientific community. He will be missed dearly.

- Professor Fengnian Xia

Mark was an extraordinary scientist, collaborator, mentor and human being. I first met him about 15 years ago when I learned of his expertise in nanosensors; called him up and proposed the problem of measuring neurochemistry and metabolites in real time from the human brain. He was so enthusiastic and began thinking many steps ahead of what was possible at that time. When the technology finally caught up to Mark’s creativity this began to be real and Hitten Zaveri and I were fortunate to watch as Mark created a device from conception to fabrication. The reason I am writing however is not about his investigative genius, but about how he used the problem as an educational tool. After dividing the project into discreet components for his students, he gave them independent reign to solve problems and he was their guide. He clearly loved to teach and this is how he will live on in our memories.

- Professor Dennis Spencer, Neurosurgery
- Professor Hitten Zaveri, Neurology

Mark's intellectual leadership and selfless devotion to his students and to his department really stood out to me as I entered the role of Dean of SEAS. He clearly felt passionately about the health of the School, and worked tirelessly on ensuring that Yale Engineering was known not only for the quality of its research but its curriculum and instruction as well. Mark was also a tireless innovator, bringing to life countless ideas for innovative devices to improve health and human lives. We were made better by his presence, and we will miss him dearly.

- Dean Jeffrey Brock

Mark headed the faculty search committee when I was first recruited to join Yale EE back in 2008. Like many others here, I clearly remember reading his papers as a graduate student. He was incredibly supportive of me and all other junior faculty. He brought a totally unique and creative energy to every situation, and I remember how he could light up a room with just a few choice words or questions. I will also remember his commitment to undergraduate teaching/advising and how he brought the same spark to teaching as he did to his research. I will really miss his kindness and unique intellect.

- Minjoo Larry Lee

RIP a very bright man. I worked on grant & contracts and I am very sorry to learn of his passing.

- Dorreth Cole

I've been an internship student who worked under prof. Reed's instruction on BAW resonator for the past two years. I firstly met Mark in July, 2019, and spent one month with him regarding the project.After that, we kept on working together through virtual meetings, even during the covid-19 period. Prof. Mark is always energetic, enthusiastic and helpful, and offered enormous assistantship to me on pushing the project and applying for graduate school with no reservation. I'm deeply impressed and benefited from his wide-spreaded minds and critical logics, and these will also influence my whole life. Not long ago, I just contacted Mark to say about visiting him when the covid is under good control, but who can imagine that he left us such abruptly. The sudden passing of Prof. Reed is a great sorrow to us all, and we will miss him forever.

- Xingchen Li

I was junior to Mark in graduate school at the Syracuse University. Mark was always a source of encouragement for the junior students. His enthusiasm for the subject set the tone for the assurance that physics was a fulfilling field of study. Although we were in different fields, virtually every conversation I had with Mark was uplifting and fun-spirited.

- Professor Vincent Rodgers

Mark was a brilliant scientist and respected intellectual leader in Nanotechnology. I use his scholarship in courses that I teach at MIT, and his legacy as a pioneer in mesoscopic physics is without question. He is well known for helping to resolve longstanding puzzles and controversies in the field. As a colleague and collaborator, Mark will be missed beyond words. I had the fortunate opportunity to work with him in the years up until his passing in a multidisciplinary academic research center that Mark helped to establish. The picture of Mark below is after a DOE review meeting in February 2020 when we had a celebratory dinner. I can safely speak for my colleagues when I say that we will feel the loss of Mark for many years to come and will remember him always.

So sad to learn the passing of Mark. We shared the same PhD advisor and he is considered our “academic big brother” and our role model - strive to be the first to “coin” an advanced physics or technology concept! We will miss him dearly!

- Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin

Mark and I attended several graduate classes together at Syracuse University. Two memories come to mind. One, his remark on how fast I jumped away from an exploding sample Dewar in his advisor's mu metal lined lab. The other, his generosity sharing an unused ticket to hear flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal at the local concert hall. His scientific and engineering achievement speaks for itself.

- Tony Salomone

In the summer of 2018, Professor Reed was at a summer program in Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. It was my great fortune to know him, as a student voluntary language tutor to share him my knowlege in mandarin Chinese. In the brief touch of 12 hours in about two weeks, I felt his great passion to learn new skills, even at the age over 60, which inspired me a lot in later years. The teaching and sharing time was of great fun, and he was a generous and humorous guy. I am writing here in memory of Professor Reed, also in memory of my happy days in the gone time.

- Mu Rongxuan

Professor Reed was my undergraduate advisor for a few years at Yale, taught several of my classes, and advised me on a student project. I learned so much from him over the years. I'll always remember his persistent smile and the cheery air he kept about him. He will be greatly missed.

- Aunica Steele

At Ti we all were young and excited about what we could do. He came to my desk one day (I had the prototype TI e-beam machine and was pushing its envelope) . He had an idea for a quantum transistor....we laid out the mask layout on some grid paper i had....in crayon....

we changed the design from circular to square to make it easier to align. It worked....

Earlier we had made a containment grid for his first quantum dot paper. He was very generous and had a wonderful personality.

i still have the grid paper design...we wrote the PDL code on the paper for the machine to use. (the crayon lines have faded a bit)

- Keith Bradshaw

Mark Reed was probably my favorite professor at Yale. He is the reason I became an Electrical Engineer. As a freshman, I was indecisive, but his informational session made it immediately obvious to me -- probably in the first five minutes -- what I wanted to become: I wanted to know what he knew, and I wanted him to teach me. His passion for the study was contagious, and I couldn't believe he could be so far into his career and still so passionate about his field.

I spent years looking forward to his Introduction to Semiconductors class. I can vaguely remember the other courses I took that year, but I cannot forget this class. I remember when, during my first office hours of the semester, he taught me how transparency develops from the electronic band structure of a material, and how in turn a material develops its band structure from the quantum mechanical properties of its molecular structure. His explanation was so simple, so elegant, and so unforgettable. I walked home down Prospect St. that day feeling like I could see structures and material properties revealing themselves everywhere I looked, just by how they passed -- or didn't pass -- the light I could see.

I still think of him when I look at glass, or discuss electromagnetic radiation and materials with colleagues in my professional life. The last thing he ever said to me was in the Becton courtyard during graduation activities and a group photo of the EE class of 2016. I was thinking anxiously about my undefined future post-Yale and probably looked pale and nauseous. He looked at me with concern, came to my side, and asked me, "are you okay"? Mark Reed was brilliant, kind, and a light to thousands of students. He is deeply missed by myself, and every other student I have spoken to in my cohort.

- Alejandro Carrillo