Photonics is one of the major drivers for progress and innovation that has significantly changed our lifestyle. Last generation has seen a transformative leap with emergence of microscale photonics from laboratory explorations to backbone technologies of today’s world. From fiber networks for internet to cheap and efficient photovoltaics for green energy, microscale photonics has been at the forefront of innovation creating new markets and fueling exponential technological progress. This progress, however, is at odds with ever increasing energy consumption (information and communication technologies alone consume 10% of world’s electricity – comparable to the combined electricity usage by Germany and Japan). Sustainable future growth while enabling disruptive innovation necessitates a framework of a new kind beyond microscale photonics.

Mesoscale photonics – science of light-materials interaction at the few nanometer dimensions – is an emerging next generation frontier offering unprecedented capabilities for design of photonic materials at the near-atomic scale with largely unexplored physical phenomena. Design and harnessing of optoelectronic responses with near-atomic precision will pave the way to technologies of a new kind, including ultrasmall (1-10 nm) and highly efficient broadband optical absorbers for novel ways of solar energy harvesting, ultrafast photodetectors (<1ps) for high-speed interconnects, ultrahigh bandwidth and low power communication links, all-optical processors for big data and artificial intelligence, chip-scale LIDARs for autonomous navigation, as well as ultralight photonic materials for laser-based spacecraft propulsion, to name few. 

Our research is aimed at pioneering design of photonic materials and exploring physical phenomena that emerge in the near-atomic, mesoscale limit. This is a highly interdisciplinary program and brings together diverse fields of science, including electrical and mechanical engineering, materials science, and condensed matter physics.