Professor Wan receives the 2025 IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award

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KAUST Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Yating Wan recently received the 2025 IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, recognized, “For contributions to silicon photonics and the integration of on-chip light sources.” IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award was established to honor an individual who has made outstanding technical contributions to photonics prior to his or her 35th birthday.

Before joining the KAUST, Prof. Wan worked in Prof. John Bower’s group at UCSB from 2017-2022 and led Intel’s project of Heterogeneously Integrated Quantum Dot Lasers on Silicon. Her research interests are in Si Photonics with special emphasis on integration of on-chip light sources. She published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, including 39 first-author journals (29) / conference proceedings (10), 14 corresponding-author journals (7)/ conference proceedings (15) and 10 journal covers. She served as an associate editor for JSTQE, JQE, Applied Optics, committee member for IEEE Photonics Society Conference Council, 2022-2024 CLEO, and referees for more than 100 peer-reviewed journals in IEEE, OSA, and the Nature Publishing Group. For her pioneering work in on-chip laser integration on Si, She received 2016-17 School of Engineering PhD Research Excellence Award in HKUST (2 awardees per year), 2018 PIERS Young Scientist Award, 2021 CLEO Tingye Li Innovation Prize (1 awardee per year), 2022 Rising Stars of Light by Light: Science & Applications (3 awardees per year), 2023 “35 Innovators Under 35 for China” by MIT Technology Review,  2024 Optica Ambassador, 2025 Sony Women in Technology Award with Nature ($250,000 prize) among others.