Bio: Shayan Mookherjea joined the UCSD faculty in July 2003. The same year he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute for Technology, where he was awarded the Charles Wilts Prize for his thesis research. Mookherjea earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering with honors from Caltech in 1999, and his S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000, where his research in optical networks contributed to the ONRAMP program. Mookherjea is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi, and a member of the OSA and IEEE.

Research: Professor Mookherjea's research addresses both devices and communication systems in opto-electronics and photonics. His research group is involved in understanding, designing devices, and carrying out experimental work related to fundamental light generation, waveguiding, and detection processes, and their applications. In particular, he investigates classical and quantum communication using light both in dielectric waveguides and fibers as well as nano-scale systems such as quantum dots and nanotubes. Topics investigated include nonlinear optics, signal generation, propagation and amplification, noise issues, pulse storage and regeneration, detection and measurement. Along with co-workers at Caltech, he is a pioneer in the emerging field of coupled-resonator optical waveguides (CROWs), and has published several theoretical and experimental papers on various aspects of manipulating and controlling the light path in linear and nonlinear optics. On the networks side, Mookherjea has contributed to early studies at MIT on remotely-pumped architectures for increasing the efficiency of practical optical distribution networks. Other research efforts currently underway include: the design and demonstration of a nonlinear multiplexed fiber transmission channel and network based on a proposal of increasing bit-rates several-fold beyond present-day schemes; and among the first studies of electromagnetic wave and soliton propagation in the nonlinear and highly non-paraxial regime, which is fundamental in the now-developing field of nano-photonics.