Nicholas HarrisFounder

United States - Greater Boston

---Bio---
With over 100 patents and 80 publications in journals including Nature, Nature Photonics, and Nature Physics, Nicholas’ seminal work on quantum and classical information processing with integrated photonics has helped launch the international research field of programmable photonics. Nicholas has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review through the Innovators Under 35 award (2021); 30 judges, including Andrew Ng, selected from over 500 nominees. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder), and Jony Ive (Apple). He received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and then a Postdoctoral Fellow through the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship.

---Perspective---
My career has been focused on understanding computers—how they work (down to the atomic scale) and where they are headed. During my time at MIT as a PhD student and post-doctoral fellow, I explored what may become the ultimate tool for understanding the exquisite details of our universe: quantum computers. Quantum computing is profoundly exciting, but supporting hardware technologies are not ready yet. I've developed a level of expertise in designing components and systems that create, processes, and detect light and what I've been able to build leads me to believe that the next step in the evolution of computing is all about light. I founded Lightmatter with a mission of creating photonic computers and new ways for chips to communicate. We are building machines that will serve as a new engine for human progress.