Photonic Topological Insulators

The recent breakthroughs on photonic topological insulators will be discussed, with an emphasis on fundamental aspects that are universal to many waves systems in nature, as well as on new ideas ranging from topological insulator lasers to disorder-induced topological phenomena.
Moti Segev is the Robert J. Shillman Distinguished Professor of Physics, at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He is exploring a wide range of phenomena related to fundamentals and applications of light-matter interactions. He did his BSc and PhD at the Technion, and after 3 years of postdoc at Caltech he became a faculty member at Princeton University, rising through the ranks to full professor within 4 years, until his return to Israel.

For his research, he has won numerous major international awards, among them the 2007 Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physical Society, the 2009 Max Born Award of the OSA, and the 2014 Arthur Schawlow Prize of the APS. In 2014 he won the Israel Prize in Physics and Chemistry – the highest recognition in Israel. In 2011 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Science (NAS) as a foreign associate. However, above all his personal achievements, he takes pride in the success of his graduate students and postdocs, among them are currently 19 professors in the USA, Germany, Taiwan, Croatia, Italy, India and Israel, and many holding senior R&D positions in the industry.