University of Rochester professor of optics and physics to deliver School of Engineering Graduate Seminar

ALFRED, NY— Govind P. Agrawal, James C. Wyant Professor of Optics and Physics at the University of Rochester, will deliver the Inamori School of Engineering Graduate Seminar on Thursday, Nov. 18, from 10:20 to 11:10 a.m.

The seminar, titled “Raman Effect and Fiber Optics,” will be offered virtually, via Zoom.

Agrawal received the B.S. degree from the University of Lucknow in 1969 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, in 1971 and 1974, respectively. In 1989, after holding positions at Ecole Polytechnic, France, City University of New York, and AT&T Bell Laboratories, NJ, Agrawal joined the faculty of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, where he holds the positions of Professor of Optics, Professor of Physics, and LLE Senior Scientist.

His research interests span from optical communications and semiconductor lasers to nonlinear fiber optics and silicon photonics.  He is an author or coauthor of more than 450 research papers and eight books including Fiber-Optic Communication Systems (5th ed., Wiley 2021) and Nonlinear Fiber Optics (6th ed., Academic Press 2019).  These two books are used worldwide for graduate teaching and have helped in training a whole generation of scientists.

Agrawal is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India.  From 2014 to 2019 he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the OSA Journal Advances in Optics and Photonics. His alma mater, Indian Institute of Technology, gave him in 2000 its Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2012, IEEE Photonics Society honored him with its Quantum Electronics Award. He received the 2013 William H. Riker University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching. In 2015, he was awarded the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal of the Optical Society. Agrawal was the recipient of two major awards in 2019:  Max Born Award of the Optical Society and Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physics Society. He was given in 2020 the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hajim School of Engineering at University of Rochester.