Andrei Faraon Named Director of Kavli Nanoscience Institute

Andrei Faraon (BS '04), the William L. Valentine Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, has been named the next Fletcher Jones Foundation Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) at Caltech. Faraon steps into the position held since October 2019 by Julia R. Greer, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering. Greer will now serve as Caltech's executive officer for applied physics and materials science.

Since its inception in 2003, KNI has served as a campus intellectual hub that seeks to facilitate interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale. The institute has provided critical infrastructure and resources in nanoscience and nanotechnology that enable faculty, students, and researchers to drive discovery in areas such as quantum engineering, novel device fabrication, electronics, medical engineering, materials science, photonics, and even the evolution of the solar system.

"I am very excited to take the role of KNI director," Faraon says. "My research group uses KNI for many projects, and I have benefited tremendously from the KNI cleanroom facilities my entire time at Caltech."

Moving forward, Faraon says one of his goals is to further improve KNI's nanofabrication capabilities by updating its electron beam lithography and plasma-etching equipment. He also hopes to further expand KNI's impact on student education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. "We offer nanofabrication classes that use equipment in KNI, and we also host undergraduate summer students," he says. "KNI plays a vital role in educating the next generation of scientists."

Faraon's research examines the relationship between light and matter, all the way down to the interaction of single atoms and single photons. He builds nanophotonic technologies for classical and quantum applications, including optically addressable quantum bits, optical storage technologies for quantum computing, as well as metasurfaces and metamaterials for imaging applications.

Faraon earned his bachelor's at Caltech and completed his graduate work at Stanford University. After a postdoctoral position at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, he returned to Caltech as an assistant professor in 2012. He became a full professor in 2018 and was named the Valentine Professor in 2023.

Among other honors, Faraon was named an Optica Fellow in 2020 after being awarded the Adolph Lomb Medal in 2018, which is given to a person who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics at an early age. He was named a KNI-Wheatley Scholar by KNI in 2016 and was honored with the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award the same year. He also earned a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Air Force Office for Scientific Research Young Investigator Award in 2015.