University of Utah electrical and computer engineering USTAR associate professor Rajesh Menon has been recognized as a 2023 Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He is one of 83 new SPIE fellows elected for 2023.
SPIE fellows are announced annually to individuals who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular.
Menon has been involved with SPIE since his time as a student and has been advancing research in the field for the last two decades. Several of his technical accomplishments include the first experimental demonstration of optics-free cameras, the first experimental demonstrations of absorption-free spectral imaging with wide ranging applications in remote sensing to micro-endoscopy, and the invention and experimental demonstration of a low-power super-resolution optical lithography technique that combines innovations in optics and photochemistry, for which Menon received the 2009 International Commission of Optics prize.
“In our lab, we continue to push the boundaries of inverse design, nanofabrication and machine-learning for imaging, sensing, and inferencing applications,” says Menon.
“I am very honored to receive this nomination,” he added, “and I hope that this can be an inspiration to younger scientists and students to know that there are organizations like these that offer a lot of support such as scholarships and travel grants.”
“I have received great support from both the John and Maria Price College of Engineering as well as the Nanofabrication facility,” Menon says. “I’d also like to thank the USTAR program for allowing quite a bit of early work in my lab, and, of course, the students; lots of the actual work is performed by our wonderful hard-working students, so in a sense, the honor really is for them.”
Menon’s research combines his expertise in nanofabrication, computation, and optical engineering to impact a myriad of fields including super-resolution lithography, metamaterials, broadband diffractive optics, integrated photonics, photovoltaics and computational optics. His research has spawned over 150 publications, over 40 patents, and four spin-off companies. Menon is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and Senior Member of the IEEE and the SPIE. Among his other honors are a NASA Early-Stage Innovations Award, NSF CAREER Award and the International Commission for Optics Prize. He currently directs the Laboratory for Optical Nanotechnologies at the University of Utah. He received S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT.
The complete list of 2023 SPIE Fellows can be found here.
If you are interested in learning more about the field of optics and photonics, visit Menon’s lab to view current available courses and opportunities.