Bio

I am an engineer, educator and entrepreneur. I currently am the Senior Associate Vice Provost of Research Platforms/Shared Facilities and an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and of Radiology at Stanford. I also direct the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center ''Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits'', and lead the ''Extreme Characterization'' thrust of the Q-Next National Quantum Center. My research develops nanophotonic methods to observe and control chemical and biological processes as they unfold with nanometer scale resolution, emphasizing critical challenges in global health and sustainability. My research has led to demonstration of negative refraction at visible wavelengths, development of Si-based optical modulators, isolators, and reconfigurable metasurfaces, product-selective photocatalysts, nanoscale force sensors, and amplification-free techniques to detect pathogens and their drug susceptibility. I was awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award (2019), the NIH Director's New Innovator Award (2019), and a Moore Inventors Fellowship (2017). I have also received the Adolph Lomb Medal (2016), a Sloan Fellowship (2015), Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2015), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2014), as well as the inaugural Kavli Nanoscience Early Career Lectureship from MRS (2013). In 2011, I was named one of Technology Review's TR35 - 35 international innovators under 35 tackling important problems in transformative ways. In addition, I have received the Outstanding Young Alum award from Washington University in St. Louis (2012), the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2012), an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Grant (2010), and the Clauser Prize for best Caltech thesis (2009). I hold patents on Si photonic modulators, isolators, metasurfaces, biosensors, all-optical chiral resolution, upconverting materials, optical tweezers, nano-optical tomography, plasmonic modulators, and plasmonic display technologies, and my work has been featured in Nature, Science, and other major scientific journals, as well as on PBS and in Michio Kaku's book 'Physics of the Impossible.'