Yoshio Nishi received a BS in Material Science and a PhD in Electric Engineering from Waseda University and the University of Tokyo, respectively. He joined Toshiba R&D, Japan, and did research on semiconductor device physics and silicon interfaces, resulting in the discovery of ESR PB Center at SiO2-Si interface, the first 256bitMNOS non-volatile RAM, SOS 16bit micro-processor and the world 1st 1Mb CMOS DRAM.

Nishi joined Hewlett-Packard in 1986 as the Director of Silicon Process Lab. He then became the Founding Director of the ULSI Research Lab. In 1995, he joined Texas Instruments, Inc. as Senior VP and Director of Research and Development for the semiconductor group. He implemented a new R&D model for silicon technology development by establishing the Kilby Center. He has been a faculty member of Stanford University since May 2002.

Nishi published more than120 papers, including conference proceedings, and co-authored 7 books. He holds more than 70 patents in US and Japan. He has served as a board member of SRC, International Sematech, NNI Panel, MARCO Governing Council, etc. He became a Fellow of IEEE in 1987, received the IEEE Jack Morton Award in 1995, and received the Robert Noyce Medal in 2002.