Shuji Nakamura (中村 修二, Nakamura Shūji, born May 22, 1954) is a Japanese-American 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. Together with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, he was one of the three recipients of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".