Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy appointment in Materials Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, DTU in 2004. Boltasseva specializes in nano- and quantum photonics, plasmonics, optical materials, optical metamaterials, and nanofabrication. Her research activities are aimed at finding new ways of discovery, realization, and machine-learning-assisted optimization of nanophotonic structures - from material growth to advanced photonic design and device demonstrations. She is the past editor-in-chief for the Optica Publishing Group Optical Materials Express journal.

Major awards:

• The R.W. Wood Prize (Optica, formerly Optical Society of America) (2023)
• Guggenheim Fellow (2022)
• MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35) (2011)
• Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), Fellow of Materials Research Society (MRS), Fellow of Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of Optica, and Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics