Department/College/UnitBaskin School of Engineering

TitleDistinguished Professor, Narinder Kapany Chair of Optoelectronics
Narinder Kapany Chair of Optoelectronics

AffiliationFaculty

Web SiteApplied
W.M.

Primary Office LocationJack Baskin Engineering Building
245

Additional Location(s)Baskin Engineering, Room 245

Mail StopSOE2

Biography, Education and Training

• Holger Schmidt received an M.S. degree in physics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1994, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. After serving as a postdoctoral Fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, he joined the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2001. He is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds the Narinder Singh Kapany Chair of Optoelectronics. He served as Associate Dean for Research for the School of Engineering and is Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Nanoscale Optofluidics. Prof. Schmidt has authored over 400 publications and several book chapters in various fields of optics and photonics. He also edited the first Handbook of Optofluidics published with CRC Press. His research interests include single molecule detection and analysis in optofluidic devices, hollow-core waveguide photonics, atomic spectroscopy on a chip, nano-magneto-optics, and spintronics. He received an NSF Career Award in 2002, a Keck Futures Nanotechnology Award in 2005, and the Engineering Achievement Award of the IEEE Photonics Society in 2019. He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2014, Fellow of the IEEE in 2017, and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2019. He received the Innovator of the Year Award at UC Santa Cruz in 2023.

Summary of Expertise

Optofluidics, integrated biophotonics, single molecule analysis on a chip; nanoscale devices

Research Interests

• Optofluidics
• Atom photonics
• Hollow-core photonics for biomedicine and quantum optics
• Nano-magnetism
• Nano-magneto-optics
• Spintronics
• Single-particle spectroscopy
• Ultrafast optics
• Integrated nanopore devices

Selected Publications

• Handbook of Optofluidics
• The photonic integration of non-solid media using optofluidics
• Optofluidic analysis system for amplification-free, direct detection of Ebola infection
• Slow light on a chip via atomic quantum state control.
• Magneto-optical observation of picosecond dynamics of single nanomagnets