IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award

Established to honor an individual who has made outstanding technical contributions to photonics (broadly defined) prior to his or her 35th birthday.

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Nomination Period: July 1 – September 30

View all nomination requirements and details.

Nominators must complete a nominee submission by September 30th each year with the following:

Candidate contact information: Name, Affiliation, Mailing address, Email, Phone Number, Date of Birth (candidate must be 35 years of age or younger on 30 September of year in which nomination is made)
Statement of a specific contribution(s) that qualify Nominee for Award, as well as other related accomplishments.
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)
Candidates need not be members of the IEEE or the Photonics Society.
Self nominations are not permitted.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
SEPTEMBER 30

View Present & Past Winners

About the Award

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.

Honoring Professor W. Alec Gambling

Professor W. A. Gambling FRS, FREng (1926 – 2021) was one of the pioneers worldwide in the development and use of optical fiber communications. He began his research in microwave communications in the late 1950s before moving into lasers and optics in the 1960s. In 1966 he founded the renowned Optical Fiber Group at the University of Southampton and led it through to 1989 when it became the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), of which he was the first Director, from 1989 to 1996. During his distinguished career, he received numerous awards and encouraged and mentored dozens of students and young researchers from around the world and it is in his honor that this award is presented.

Introducing Our Award Honorees

We are proud to recognize and celebrate honorees of the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award.

Our Most Recent Honoree

Mikael Mazur, 2026

For seminal contributions to fiber sensing using submarine fiber-optic networks and real-time multiple-input-multiple-output digital signal processing.

Dr. Mikael Mazur is a Member of Technical Staff in the Advanced Photonics Research Department at Nokia Bell Labs, NJ. He received his PhD from the Photonics Laboratory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden (2019), where his dissertation on optical frequency combs pioneered new multi-wavelength signal processing schemes. Dr. Mazur’s current research lies at the intersection of high-capacity transmission and environmental sensing.

He is spearheading the development of real-time signal processing for space-division multiplexing (SDM) and long-reach distributed fiber sensing methods. A key focus of his work is transforming trans-oceanic submarine cables into a global instrument for Earth and ocean science. By turning commercial networks into vast sensing arrays, he aims to close critical data gaps in our understanding of ocean dynamics and Earth’s interior structure, while simultaneously enabling real-time earthquake and tsunami early warning systems.

An active leader in the photonics community, Dr. Mazur currently serves as the General Chair of the IEEE Photonics Summer Topicals 2026 and has served on Technical Program Committees for conferences including OFC, CLEO, and IPC. He is a member of IEEE, OPTICA, and the SSA. Outside the lab, he is a passionate scuba diver, a hobby that fuels his dedication to marine conservation and oceanographic research.

View All Award Winners

Year	Award Winner	Description
2025	Yating Wan	For contributions to silicon photonics and the integration of on-chip light sources.
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.