Halas Bio

Naomi J. Halas

University Professor

Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy

Director, Laboratory for Nanophotonics

Nanoengineering, Plasmonics, Nanophotonics

B.A. (1980) La Salle College, magna cum laude

M.A. (1984) Bryn Mawr College

Ph.D. (1986) Bryn Mawr College

D.Sc. (2007) La Salle University

Naomi Halas is a University Professor at Rice (professor in all departments, Rice’s highest faculty rank) and the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She was a graduate research fellow at IBM Research, Yorktown, NY and served as a postdoctoral associate at AT&T Bell Laboratories and joined the Rice faculty in 1990. Halas is one of the pioneering researchers in the field of plasmonics, creating the concept of the “tunable plasmon” and inventing a family of nanoparticles with resonances spanning the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum. Halas pursues fundamental studies of coupled plasmonic systems as well as applications of plasmonics in biomedicine, optoelectronics, machine learning-enabled chemical sensing of environmental toxins, and plasmon-based photocatalysis. She is author of more than 400 refereed publications, has more than 30 issued patents, has presented more than 600 invited talks, and has been cited more than 130,000 times (over 90,000 citations and H=149 on Web of Science, over 130,000 citations and H=169 on Google Scholar). She is co-founder of Nanospectra Biosciences, a Houston-based company developing photothermal therapies for prostate cancer and other diseases based on her nanoparticles, nearing FDA approval, and a co-founder of Syzygy Plasmonics, a deep decarbonization platform based on her plasmonic photocatalyst particles. Halas is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. She is a recipient of the American Physical Society Mildred Dresselhaus Prize Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids, the Willis E. Lamb Award, and the Wood Prize of Optica. She is a Fellow of OSA, APS, SPIE, IEEE, MRS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). She has been a National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow (now called Vannevar Bush Fellow) of the U.S. Department of Defense and an advisor to the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate of the National Science Foundation.

Naomi J. Halas Curriculum Vitae

(updated May, 2019)

Contact Information:

Naomi J. Halas

281 Brockman Hall

ECE Department

Rice University

6100 Main St MS 378

Houston, TX  77005-1892 

713-348-5612

713-348-5686 fax

halas@rice.edu