Jerry M. Woodall, the C. Baldwin Sawyer Professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University, received a B.S. in metallurgy in 1960 from MIT. In 1982, he was awarded a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Early in his career, he pioneered the horizontal Bridgman growth of both high purity GaAs crystals, and highly perfect GaAs crystals used to fabricate the early injection lasers. He then pioneered and patented the development of the liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) of Si doped GaAs high efficiency IR LEDs. This was followed by the invention and seminal work on the LPE of GaAlAs and GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunctions. He also pioneered and patented the GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor. His demonstration of the GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction led to the creation of important new areas of solid-state physics. Also, using MBE and the GaAs/InGaAs strained, non-lattice-matched heterostructure, he pioneered the "pseudomorphic" HEMT, a state-of-the-art high speed device. His present work involves the MBE growth of III-V materials and devices with special emphasis on devices using non-lattice-matched epilayers, metal contacts and doping studies.

His efforts are recorded in over 275 publications in the open literature, 67 issued U.S. patents, and 1 patent pending. His accomplishments have been recognized by his election as IBM Fellow in 1985, by five major IBM Research Division Awards, 30 IBM Invention Achievement Awards, and an IBM Corporate Award in 1992 for the invention of the GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction. Other recognition includes 9 NASA certificates of recognition, a 1975 IR-100 Award, the 1980 Electronics Division Award of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), the 1984 IEEE Jack A. Morton Award, the 1985 ECS Solid State Science and Technology Award, the 1988 Heinrich Welker Gold Medal and International GaAs Symposium Award, the 1990 American Vacuum Society (AVS) Medard Welch (Founder’s) Award, its highest honor, the 1997 Eta Kappa Nu Vladimir Karapetoff Eminent Members' Award, the 1998 American Society for Engineering Education’s General Electric Senior Research Award, and the 1998 Electrochemical Society’s Edward Goodrich Acheson (Founder’s) Award, its highest honor. Honorific recognition includes his election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989, Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1982, IEEE Fellow in 1990, ECS Fellow in 1992, and AVS Fellow in 1994.