Biography for Dr. Shawn Y. Lin (sylin@rpi.edu)

Shawn-Yu Lin received his bachelor degree from National Taiwan University, master degree from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and doctoral degree from Princeton University.

In 1992, he joined IBM T.J. Watson research center, first working on the wave-function symmetry of high temperature superconductors and then on ultra-fast photo-conductive switches. In 1994, he moved to

Albuquerque, New Mexico and joined Sandia National Laboratory. Over a period of ten years, he led Sandia’s multi-million efforts in developing photonic-lattice devices for communication, defense and emerging energy applications. In the summer of 2004, Shawn assumed his new job at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a distinguished professor at the Future-Chips Constellation and Professor of Physics.

Shawn is a fellow of American Physical Society, a fellow of Optical Society of America, a distinguished member-of-technical-staff at Sandia National Laboratory. He also holds position as an

adjunct professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and a research professor at Iowa State University. Shawn’s research interest is in integrated optoelectronics, silicon photonics, nano-photonics and

quantum optics. From 2001-2003, he also headed a US Department-of-Energy multi-laboratories initiative in Nano-Structural Photonics. Most recently, Shawn serves as a scientific advisor at the newly established

National Nano-Science Center at ITRI of Taiwan.

Shawn is the recipient of several awards, which include the Asian-American Engineer-of-the-Year award from Chinese Institute of Engineering/USA, the NOVA Award from Sandia National

Laboratories, the Technology-of-the-Year Award from Industry Week Magazine and the R&D 100 Award, all for his contribution to photonic-lattice research. In 1999, his work on photonic-lattice was cited

as one of the most important breakthroughs of the year by Science Magazine. In 2004, Shawn received the NY-STAR faculty development award from the governor of New York State.

Shawn is active in professional societies. He was the chairman of the PECS (photonic and electromagnetic crystal structures) international workshop held in Los Angeles 2002. He co-chairs the

photonic-lattice subcommittee at Photonic-West Conference of the SPIE Optical Engineering Society since 2000 and is a member of photonic-lattice subcommittee at CLEO/QELS conference. Shawn also

frequently serves as a reviewer for NSF, DOE of USA and National Research Council of Taiwan.