The IEEE Photonics Society Technical Skills Educator Award was created to recognize educators specializing in bringing technician and technical skills training within the photonics field of interest to traditionally underserved communities. While candidates teaching at the technical skills level, such as at US community colleges, are targeted, applicants from any accredited, degree- or certificate-granting institutions worldwide are welcome.
The award recognizes effective, impactful, and innovative educators who bring specialized training to communities for whom photonics is not typically viewed as a common educational and career path. Contributions to curriculum and course development, industrial and governmental education programs, textbook development, are all considered in the candidate evaluation. The 2021 Technical Skills Educator Award honoree is Lukas Chrostowski, “For outstanding and innovative contributions to silicon photonics education.”
Lukas Chrostowski is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Born in Poland, he earned a B.Eng. from Mc Gill University and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests are in silicon photonics, optoelectronics and lasers, including design fabrication and test for applications in optical communications, biophotonics and quantum information.
He has published more than 300 journal and conference publications. He co-authored the textbook “Silicon Photonics Design” (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Dr. Chrostowski served as the co-director of the University of British Columbia Nanofabrication Facility between 2008 and 2017. He is the Program Director of the Silicon ElectronicPhotonic Integrated Circuits (SiEPIC) research training program in Canada (www.siepic.ca), and has taught numerous silicon photonics workshops and courses since 2008. Chrostowski received the Killam Teaching Prize at the University of British Columbia in 2014. He was an elected member of the IEEE Photonics Society Board of Governors during 2014–2016. He was elected to the college of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019. He is the Program Director for the NSERC CREATE Quantum Computing research training program in Canada (2020-) (www.quantum-bc.ca).
