Peter John Burke

Biography

Peter John Burke, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, with courtesy appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and the Chemical and Materials Physics program. Burke received a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University in 1998 and served as a Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics at the California Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2001 before joining UC Irvine. He was promoted to IEEE Fellow in 2020 and holds a Guinness World Record for the farthest distance to control a commercially available unmanned aerial vehicle at 18,411 kilometers.

Burke's research spans carbon nanotube and graphene electronics, mitochondrial biophysics, and unmanned aerial systems. He founded RF Nano Corporation in 2005, serving as Director and CTO through 2009, and the company raised over $15 million in venture capital funding to commercialize carbon nanotube technology. Burke has successfully raised over $18 million in university grants from agencies including ARO, ONR, DARPA, NSF, and NIH. He received Young Investigator awards from both the Army Research Office and Office of Naval Research from 2002 to 2005, and was selected as a Frontiers of Engineering participant by the National Academy of Engineering in 2002.

Burke has published over 90 journal articles and holds 15 issued patents. He has served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology and IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems, and as a founding member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques MTT-25 Technical Committee on RF Nanotechnology. At UC Irvine, Burke served as Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs from 2009 to 2012 and as Associate Chair for Teaching from 2020 to 2025, and chaired the Strategic Planning Committee for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 2015 to 2019.

Education

• Ph.D. in Physics, Yale University, 1998
• B.A. in Physics, University of Chicago, 1992

Distinctions

• Guinness World Record for the farthest distance to control a commercially available Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) at 18,411 kilometers (11,440 miles), 2022
• IEEE Fellow, 2020
• Frontiers of Engineering participant, 2002
• Caltech Prize Fellowship: Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar, 1997-2000
• Outstanding Eagle Scout Award (NOESA), Boy Scouts of America (BSA) - For outstanding lifetime achievements of an Eagle Scout, 2017
• J.W. Gibbs Fellowship, Department of Physics, 1992
• Dean's Award for Faculty Innovation in Teaching, 2022
• Award for Technical Excellence, 1997
• NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellowship, 1993-1996
• Faculty Innovation Award, 2014