Wide gap semiconductors are often designed based on energy separation of the cation and oxygen orbitals. In strongly correlated semiconductors, however interacting electrons create effective transport gaps based on the occupancy of orbitals. I will discuss some recent examples from our laboratory on discovery of new electronic phases that have gaps of the order of 3eV that have been designed by electron doping of perovskite nickelates. In the un-doped case, these systems possess small gaps of the order of 0.1eV, and adding electrons to the partially filled d-orbitals, enhances the gap to 3eV taking advantage of strong correlations in the eg orbitals of Ni sites. This new strategy allows us to create wide gaps in semiconductors that are nominally metallic or nearly-metallic like in the pristine state and could be expanded to a broader range of materials systems. Besides the gap opening that in itself is fascinating, there are several opportunities to tune these materials to achieve multiple resistance states, continuous tuning of resistance by anion-site disorder and create multi-functionality. I will then give some examples of their applications in neural science and engineering, photonics and evolutionary biology.