David Miller

David Miller (B. Sc., St. Andrews, Ph.D., Heriot-Watt) is the W. M. Keck Professor of Electrical Engineering (Emeritus since Oct. 2024), and Professor by Courtesy of Applied Physics at Stanford University. Before Stanford, he was with Bell Laboratories from 1981 to 1996, as a department head from 1987. 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 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 was President of the IEEE LEOS (now Photonics Society) in 1995, and has served on boards for various societies, companies, and university and government bodies. He was awarded the Optica Adolph Lomb Medal, R. W. Wood Prize and Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W Quinn Prize, the ICO International Prize in Optics, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and the 2013 Carnegie Millennium Professorship. He is also a Fellow of AAAS, APS, IEEE, Optica, the Electromagnetics Academy, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, holds two Honorary Doctorates, and is a Member of the US National Academies of Sciences and of Engineering.