Biography
Eli Yablonovitch is an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA after having served as a regular faculty until 2007. He is currently a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Berkeley. He graduated with the Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Harvard University in 1972. He worked for two years at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and then became a professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. In 1979 he joined Exxon to do research on photovoltaic solar energy. Then in 1984, he joined Bell Communications Research, where he was a Distinguished Member of Staff, and also Director of Solid-State Physics Research. In 1992 he joined the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is now The Northrop Grumman Opto-Electronics Chair, Professor of Electrical Engineering.

Prof. Yablonovitch's work has covered a broad variety of topics: nonlinear optics, laser-plasma interaction, infrared laser chemistry, photovoltaic energy conversion, strained-quantum-well lasers, and chemical modification of semiconductor surfaces. Currently his main interests are in optoelectronics, high speed optical communications, high efficiency light-emitting diodes and nano-cavity lasers, photonic crystals at optical and microwave frequencies, quantum computing and quantum communication.

Yablonovitch was a Founder of the W/PECS series of Photonic Crystal International Workshops that began in 1999. (PECS VIII will be held in Australia in 2009.)

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society. Yablonovitch is a Life Member of Eta Kappa Nu, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Adolf Lomb Medal, the W. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the R.W. Wood Prize, and the Julius Springer Prize.

His other honors are listed in the Awards section below.

Research Interests
Professor Yablonovitch's research focuses on optoelectronics, high speed optical communications, nanocavity lasers, photonic crystals at optical and microwave frequencies, quantum computing and communication

Awards and Recognitions