Yeshaiahu Fainman

Brief Bio

Professor Yeshaiahu Fainman is currently the Chair and a Cymer Professor of Advanced Optical Technologies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received his M. Sc and Ph. D degrees from Technion, Israel in 1979 and 1983, respectively. From 1990, he has been directing research of the Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics group at UCSD and has helped to make pioneering contributions to utilizing near field optical phenomena in inhomogeneous and meta- materials, nanophotonics and plasmonics, nonlinear optics of femtosecond pulses and non-conventional imaging. His research applications target information technologies and biomedical sensing. He has past experience in leading large-scale multidisciplinary projects. For example, in the early 90's he was a director of a project on "Photonic Imaging Networks," supported by Focused Research Initiative program of BMDO; as Director led one of the DARPA OptoCenters (Optofluidics), DARPA's Si Phaser and NACHOs programs; and currently he is the Deputy Director of NSF's Engineering Research Center - Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN). He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, and recipient of the Miriam and Aharon Gutvirt Prize, Technion, Haifa, Israel (1982), Lady Davis Fellowship (2006), and Brown award (2006). His current research interests are in near field optical science and technology compatible with CMOS manufacturing. Specific research projects include (i) design, fabrication and experimental validation of nanoscale resonant optical structures and devices exploiting both dielectric and metalo-dielectric nanostructures; (ii) nanoscale lasers and evanescent field imaging and sensing; (iii) plasmonic nanostructures for electromagnetic field localization beyond diffraction limit, enablingbiomedical sensingand imaging on the nanoscale in all three spatial dimensions; (iv) optofluidics technology integrating microfluidics with micro- and nano-scale optics for sensing and monitoring; (v) optical signal and information processing using femtosecond laser pulses; (vi) quantum cryptography, communication, and quantum information processing; and (vi) multidimensional quantitative imaging in near and far fields. He has contributed over 215 manuscripts in peer review journals and over 455 conference presentations and conference proceedings.