Robert Devlin

Rob Devlin is co-founder and CEO of Metalenz, the first company to commercialize metasurface technology for mass markets. He holds a BS/MS in Electrical Engineering and Materials Science from Drexel University and a PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University in the lab of Professor Federico Capasso. His research has spanned the topics of nanofabrication, nanophotonics, and materials science. He has authored or co-authored 20+ publications that have provided critical advances and first demonstrations in the field of metasurfaces, including the first demonstration of high-quality visible images taken with metasurface optics. This work was recognized as a Top 10 Breakthrough of 2016 by Science Magazine.

From this demonstration, Rob co-founded Metalenz along with Professor Capasso and Bart Riley in 2016. At Metalenz, Rob and his team scaled metasurfaces to be manufactured in standard semiconductor foundries and, as a result, launched metasurfaces into the market, announcing the first metasurfaces in consumer devices in partnership with ST Microelectronics in 2022. There are currently more than 100M metasurfaces across consumer and IoT markets resulting from the commercialization efforts at Metalenz. In 2024, the company demonstrated the world’s simplest, secure face authentication solution—Polar ID. With this product, Metalenz is leveraging the unique capabilities of metasurfaces to capture all information in light, bringing complex optical sensing systems to mobile form factors and price points for the first time. Metalenz believes that this capability of metasurfaces can provide a revolution in optical sensing by providing billions of users and devices with new information for the first time.

In 2025, he received Optica’s Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award, “For critical contributions to foundational optical metasurface design, pioneering leadership to commercialize metasurface optics, and product development of the first polarization sensor for consumer markets, leveraging on semiconductor foundries for mass production of metaoptics.”