Sir Michael Berry

University of Bristol, UK

Sir Michael Berry, is a world-renowned physicist famous for the discovery of geometric phase called the Berry’s effects in quantum mechanics; He specializes in semiclassical physics (asymptotic physics, quantum chaos) applied to wave phenomena in quantum mechanics and other areas such as optics. He received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from St. Andrews in 1965. Since 1967, he has been at the University of Bristol, first as a postdoctoral fellow, then Lecturer and then Reader before becoming Professor in 1979.

Among his many honors, Professor Berry became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1982, a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts in 1983, and a Fellow of the Royal Institution in 1986. He also became a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden in 1986 as well as a member of the European Academy in 1989. In 1990, he received the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld prize from the American Physical Society and the Paul Dirac medal and prize from the Institute of Physics. He then won the Naylor Prize from the London Mathematical Society in 1993. In 1995, he became a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. In 1996, he became a Knight Bachelor. Professor Berry won the Kapitsa Medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1997 and the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1998. In 2000, he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Also in 2000, Michael shared the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics with Andre Geim for their work on "The Physics of Flying Frogs". In 2005, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and, also in 2005, he won the Polya Prize from the London Mathematical Society.

Professor Berry has given several prestigious lectures throughout the world, including the Rouse Ball (1983) and Dirac Memorial Lectures (2007) at Cambridge, the Loeb Lectures (1989) at Harvard, the Schrodinger Lecture (1993) at Imperial College, the Gibbs Lecture (2002) at the AMS meeting in San Diego, the J. L. Synge Memorial Lecture (2004) in Dublin, the Simons Foundation Distinguished Lecture (2005) at University of New York - Stony Brook, and the Ramanujan Lecture (2009) at the Saha Institute. He has held visiting positions in Nigeria, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Israel, Mexico, and Belgium.

Federico Capasso

Harvard University, USA

Federico Capasso, is the Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after 27 years at Bell Labs where he was Member of Technical Staff, Department Head and Vice President for Physical Research. He is visiting professor at NTU with both the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His research has focused on nanoscale science and technology encompassing a broad range of topics. He pioneered band-structure engineering of semiconductor nanostructures and devices, invented and first demonstrated the quantum cascade laser and investigated QED forces including the first measurement of a repulsive Casimir force. His most recent contributions are new plasmonic devices and flat optics based on metasurfaces. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His awards include the King Faisal Prize, the IEEE Edison Medal, the SPIE Gold Medal, the American Physical Society Arthur Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, the Jan Czochralski Award for lifetime achievements in Materials Science, the IEEE Sarnoff Award in Electronics, the Materials Research Society Medal, the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, the Optical Society Wood Prize, the Berthold Leibinger Future Prize, the Julius Springer Prize in Applied Physics, the European Physical Society Quantum Electronics Prize.

Nader Engheta

University of Pennsylvania, USA

Nader Engheta, is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, with affiliations in the Departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Bioengineering, Physics and Astronomy, and Materials Science and Engineering.  He received his B.S. degree from the University of Tehran, and his M.S and Ph.D. degrees from Caltech.  Selected as one of the Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology in 2006 for developing the concept of optical lumped nanocircuits, he is a Guggenheim Fellow, an IEEE Third Millennium Medalist, a Fellow of IEEE, American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering, and the recipient of numerous awards for his research including 2014 Balthasar van der Pol Gold Medal from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), 2013 Benjamin Franklin Key Award, 2013 Inaugural SINA Award in Engineering, 2012 IEEE Electromagnetics Award, 2008 George H. Heilmeier Award for Excellence in Research, the Fulbright Naples Chair Award, NSF Presidential Young Investigator award, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Educator term Chair, and several teaching awards including the Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award, S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award and W. M. Keck Foundation Award.  His current research activities span a broad range of areas including nanophotonics, metamaterials, nano-scale optics, graphene optics, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, optical nanoengineering, microwave and optical antennas, and engineering and physics of fields and waves.  He has co-edited (with R. W. Ziolkowski) the book entitled “Metamaterials:  Physics and Engineering Explorations” by Wiley-IEEE Press, 2006.  He was the Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Plasmonics in June 2012.

Claire Gmachl

Princeton University, USA

Claire F. Gmachl, is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. She is best known for her work in the development of quantum cascade lasers. earned her M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Innsbruck in 1991. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna in 1995, graduating sub auspiciis Praesidentis (with special honors by the president of the Austrian republic). Her studies focused on integrated optical modulators and tunable surface-emitting lasers in the near infrared. From 1996 to 1998, she was a Post-Doctoral Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories. In 1998, she became a formal Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and in 2002 she was named a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, in part due to her work on the development of the quantum cascade laser. In 2003, she left Bell Labs and took a position as Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where she is currently working as a full Professor since 2007.  In 2004, Popular Science named Gmachl in its "Class of 2004 - Brilliant 10," its list of the 10 most promising scientists under 40. She went on, in September 2005, to win the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant." Recently, she was named the director of the new Mid-InfraRed Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) Center, funded by the National Science Foundation. Although Gmachl originally intended to study theoretical applied mathematics, her interest soon turned to theoretical applied physics, and, with the encouragement of an advisor, experimental sciences. As such, she works in the fields of optics and semiconductor laser technology. Gmachl has conceived several novel designs for solid-state lasers and her work has led to advances in the development of quantum cascade lasers.

Atac Imamoglu

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland

Atac Imamoglu, is a graduate of Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in electrical engineering. He got his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford. He did post-doctoral work on atomic and molecular physics at Harvard. In 1993, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1999, he became a professor of electrical engineering and physics. In 2001 he moved to the University of Stuttgart in Germany. Since 2002, he has been working at ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, where he is heading the research group on Quantum Photonics. His group at ETHZ investigates quantum optics of solid-state zero-dimensional emitters, such as quantum dots or defects, embedded in photonic nano-structures. He received the Charles Townes Award of the Optical Society of America in 2010, Quantum Electronics Award of IEEE in 2009, the Muhammed Dahleh Award of UCSB in 2006, the Wolfgang Paul Award of the Humboldt Foundation in 2002, the TÜBÄ°TAK prize for physics in 2001, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in 1996, and NSF Career Award in 1995. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the IMDEA Nanoscience Institute. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Optical Society of America and the Turkish National Academy of Sciences.

Mikhail D. Lukin

Harvard University, USA

Mikhail Lukin received the Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University in 1998. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics at Harvard University from 1998-2001. He joined the faculty of Harvard Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in 2001 and has been a Professor of Physics at Harvard since 2004. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America. His research interests include quantum optics, quantum control of atomic and nanoscale solid-state systems, quantum dynamics of many-body systems and quantum information science. He has co-authored over 150 technical papers and has received a number of awards, including Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, NSF Career Award, Adolph Lomb Medal of the Optical Society of America (2000) and AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize.

Vladimir Shalaev

Purdue University, USA

Vladimir (Vlad) M. Shalaev, Scientific Director for Nanophotonics in Birck Nanotechnology Center and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, specializes in nanophotonics, plasmonics, and optical metamaterials. Vlad Shalaev received several awards for his research in the field of nanophotonics and metamaterials, including the Max Born Award of the Optical Society of America for his pioneering contributions to the field of optical metamaterials, the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, the UNESCO Medal for the development of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, and the OSA and SPIE Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, APS, SPIE, and OSA. Prof. Shalaev authored three books, twenty-six invited book chapters and over 400 research publications.

Nikolay Zheludev

Southampton University, UK & NTU, Singapore 

Nikolay Zheludev, directs the Centre for Photonics Metamaterials at Southampton University, UK and the Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His personal awards include Senior Professorships of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK), the Leverhulme Trust Seniors Fellowship and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellowship. He was awarded MSc, PhD and DSc from Moscow State University.

Single Photons and Atoms at Meta Surfaces
Girish S Agarwal, Oklahoma State University, USA

Electronically Tunable Metamaterials
Harry Atwater, California Institute of Technology, USA

PT symmetry and the taming of instabilities
Carl Bender, Washington University, USA

Transparent conducting oxides and hard plasmonic ceramics for next-generation nanophotonics
Alexandra Boltasseva, Purdue University, USA

How to deal with the loss in Plasmonics and Metamaterials
Jacob Khurgin, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Photonic Hypercrystals
Evgenii Narimanov, Purdue University, USA

Quantum Photonic Computing
Jeremy O'Brian, University of Bristol, UK

Photonic Topological Anderson Insulators
Mordechai (Moti) Segev, Technion, Israel