David A. B. Miller

David A. B. Miller received a BSc in Physics from St. Andrews University, and performed his graduate studies at Heriot-Watt University where he was a Carnegie Research Scholar. After receiving the PhD degree in 1979, he continued to work at Heriot-Watt University as a Lecturer in the Department of Physics. He moved to AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1981 as a Member of Technical Staff, and from 1987 to 1996 was a Department Head of the Advanced Photonics Research Department. He is currently the W. M. Keck Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor by Courtesy of Applied Physics at Stanford University. He also served as the Director of the E. L. Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford University from 1997-2006.

His research has covered semiconductor optics and optoelectronics, especially the discovery of the quantum-confined Stark effect in quantum wells and its application to optical modulators and switches; optics in digital systems, in particular his contributions to and analysis of the benefits of optical interconnects; nanophotonic structures and devices; fundamentals of optics and waves, including especially the concept of communication modes and its applications; and complex and controllable photonic circuits, including invention of universal architectures and of algorithms for their automatic configuration.

He has been a member or chair of over 40 technical conference committees, and was General Co-Chair for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in 1996. He has been elected to the Boards of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) and The Optical Society (OSA), was a member of the Defense Sciences Research Council for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 1991-2005, and also served on several scientific journal editorial boards. IEEE LEOS (now Photonics Society) in 1995. He also has served on boards for various societies, companies, and university and government bodies. He has published over 300 scientific papers, holds over 75 patents, has a Google h-index of over 110, is the author of the textbook Quantum Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers (Cambridge, 2008), and has taught open online quantum mechanics classes to over 80,000 students.

He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of Optica, the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the IEEE, the American Physical Society, and the Electromagnetics Academy, and was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an honorary Doctor of Engineering from Heriot-Watt University. For his work on semiconductor nonlinear optics, quantum well optical properties, and novel devices, he was awarded the 1986 Adolph Lomb Medal, was co-recipient of the 1988 R. W. Wood Medal, and received the 1991 Prize of the International Commission for Optics. He was also an IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Traveling Lecturer in 1986-87. He was awarded an IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000, and the Carnegie Centenary Professorship in 2013.

In 2025, he received the Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize, “For fundamental scientific and engineering research contributions spanning multiple areas, including optics in digital systems, fundamentals of optics and waves, and complex and controllable photonic circuits.”