Professor John Bowers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, (UCSB) has been selected to receive the 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Award. Bowers is the first faculty member from UCSB to receive the honor, which recognizes his pioneering research in silicon photonics, including hybrid silicon lasers, photonic integrated circuits and ultralow-loss waveguides. "Silicon photonics has the potential to revolutionize photonics and electronics by enabling low-cost, high-volume manufacturing of optical interconnects with a path toward embedding high-capacity fiber optics on circuit boards and eventually on electronic chips," Bowers said. He holds the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology at UCSB and is director of the campus's Institute for Energy Efficiency. An internationally renowned authority on optoelectronics, Bowers has focused his expertise on silicon photonics and optoelectronics, with the goals of developing energy-efficient technology for the next generation of optical networks. "This is a major award," said Rod Alferness, dean of the UCSB College of Engineering and recipient of the 2005 IEEE Photonics Award. "The IEEE Photonics Award is the most prestigious recognition of contributions to the field of photonics and optics. John Bowers' work in integrated silicon photonics is leading the way to the future of electronics and telecommunications." Bowers, who came to UCSB in 1987, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors, a fellow of the IEEE, Optical Society of America (OSA) and the American Physical Society. He is a recipient of the OSA Holonyak Prize and the IEEE LEOS William Streifer Award. He and his colleagues received the 2007 Annual Creativity in Electronics Award for Most Promising Technology for the hybrid silicon laser.