Nominators must complete a nominee submission by September 30th each year with the following:
Statement of a specific contribution(s) that qualify Nominee for Award, as well as other related accomplishments. (Maximum of three pages)
Proposed Award Citation: (Word Count: 20)
Nominee’s curriculum vita (Maximum of three pages)
Endorsements: Three letters of endorsement are required. You may enter the endorsers name and email to send an automatically generated email request, or if you have received the endorsement, you can upload directly to the system. (One page limit)
The IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award was established to honor an individual who has made outstanding technical contributions to photonics (broadly defined) prior to his or her 35th birthday.
Presented to: An individual
Scope: To recognize outstanding technical contributions to photonics (broadly defined) prior to the candidates 35th birthday.
Prize: A Certificate and Honorarium
Basis for judging: Candidates are rank-ordered by their qualifications and accomplishments, then discussed by recognized experts on the committee in order to arrive at a final decision.
We are proud to recognize and celebrate honorees of the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award.
For contributions to silicon photonics and the integration of on-chip light sources.
Dr. Yating Wan is an Assistant Professor at KAUST. Before that, she worked in Prof. John Bower’s group at UCSB from 2017-2022 and led Intel’s project of Heterogeneously Integrated Quantum Dot Lasers on Silicon. Her research interests are in Si Photonics with special emphasis on integration of on-chip light sources. She published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, including 39 first-author journals (29) / conference proceedings (10), 14 corresponding-author journals (7)/ conference proceedings (15) and 10 journal covers. She served as an associate editor for JSTQE, JQE, Applied Optics, committee member for IEEE Photonics Society Conference Council, 2022-2024 CLEO, and referees for more than 100 peer-reviewed journals in IEEE, OSA, and the Nature Publishing Group. For her pioneering work in on-chip laser integration on Si, She received 2016-17 School of Engineering PhD Research Excellence Award in HKUST (2 awardees per year), 2018 PIERS Young Scientist Award, 2021 CLEO Tingye Li Innovation Prize (1 awardee per year), 2022 Rising Stars of Light by Light: Science & Applications (3 awardees per year), 2023 “35 Innovators Under 35 for China” by MIT Technology Review, 2024 Optica Ambassador, 2025 Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature ($250,000 prize) among others.
| Year | Award Winner | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Chia Wei (Wade) Hsu | For seminal work on bound states in the continuum in optics and for breakthroughs in computational electromagnetics and imaging. |
| 2023 | Lin Chang | For the development of highly nonlinear ultra-low loss photonic platforms. |
| 2022 | Deep Jariwala | For breakthrough advances in optical characterization and understanding of light-matter coupling in excitonic and strongly-correlated semiconductors. |
| 2021 | Xi (Vivian) Chen | For outstanding contributions to high-speed and high-capacity fiber-optic communications. |
| 2020 | Mikhail Kats | For contributions in the fields of nanophotonics and optical materials, especially for metasurfaces, optics with phase-transition materials, and thermal-emission engineering. |
| 2019 | Junjie Yao | For pioneering novel photo-acoustic imaging that allows probing living tissue functions at unprecedented accuracy, sensitivity, and speed. |
| 2018 | Yu Shrike Zhang | For pioneering contributions in applying biophotonics to characterization of engineered tissue constructs. |
| 2017 | Hannah Joyce | For significant contributions to nanowire optoelectronics and terhertz spectroscopy. |
| 2016 | Igor Aharonovich | For contribution to the development of single photon emitters in wide bandgap materials. |
| 2015 | Jeremy N. Munday | For pioneering contributions to plasmonic and photonic light-trapping in solar cells. |
| 2014 | Ertugrul Cubukcu | For contributions to photonics beyond the diffraction limit with nanoantenna-based devices and sensors. |
| 2013 | Alexandra Boltasseva | For seminal contributions to the development of metal-dielectric waveguides for integrated optics and novel approaches for realization of nanoplasmonic devices. |
| 2012 | William Green | For contributions in CMOS integrable, highly scaled, Silicon Nano-Photonics, and pioneering Silicon Photonics for mid-infrared applications and non-linear-optics. |
| 2011 | Hatice Altug | For contributions on nanoplasmonics and integrated nanofluidics for biological sensing and spectroscopy. |
| 2010 | Sander Lars Jansen | For pioneering contributions in optical OFDM for fiber-optic transmission systems. |
| 2009 | Aydogan Ozcan | For his pioneering contributions to non-destructive non-linear material characterization techniques, near-field and on-chip imaging and diagnostic systems. |
| 2008 | Jose Azana | For pioneer contributions on innovative ultra-fast optical pulse processing techniques, particularly temporal self-imaging (Talbot) effects, using all-fiber grating technologies. |
| 2007 | Randy Bartels | For pioneering contributions to ultrafast molecular photonics and photonic reagent control of quantum systems on an unprecedented time-scale. |
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