Benjamin John Eggleton, , (born 6 November 1970) is Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sydney. He is also Professor in the School of Physics where he leads a research group in photonics, nanotechnology and smart sensors and serves as co-director of the NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN).
Education and career
Eggleton obtained the bachelor's degree (with honours) in Science in 1992 and PhD degree in physics from the University of Sydney in 1996. In 1996, he joined Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies as a Postdoctoral Member of Staff in the Optical Physics Department under the supervision of Dr Richart E. Slusher. In 1998 he transferred to the Optical Fiber Research Department as a Member of Technical Staff and was promoted to Technical Manager of the Fiber Gratings Group in 2000. He was then promoted to Research Director within the Specialty Fiber Business Division of Bell Laboratories, where he was engaged in forward-looking research supporting Lucent Technologies business in optical fiber devices.
Eggleton returned to the University of Sydney in 2003 as a full Professor and ARC Federation Fellowship in the School of Physics. He was founding Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) and served as Director from 2003 to 2017.
In 2009 Eggleton established the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS) at the University of Sydney and was the Director from 2009 to 2018. He was an ARC Laureate Fellow and an ARC Federation Fellowship twice.
In 2016 Eggleton and Gooding established the NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN) as the inaugural NSW Innovation Network. Eggleton currently serves as co-director of NSSN.
From 2018 to 2022, Eggleton was Director of the University of Sydney Nano Institute (Sydney Nano).
As of 2022, he was appointed as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Sydney. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) has executive responsibility for pivotal areas of the university's Research Portfolio relating to research policy, performance and conduct including clinical trials, research reporting and compliance. The role has responsibility for research integrity and ethics management.
Research
Eggleton's research links fundamental to applied science and spans physics and engineering. He has made pioneering contributions to nonlinear optics and all-optical signal processing with recent breakthrough achievements in the nonlinear optics of periodic media, slow-light in photonic crystals and ultrafast planar waveguide nonlinear optics. His research into new classes of nonlinear waveguides has created a new paradigm for photonic chip based ultrafast optical signal processing and his group holds various world records.
Eggleton's breakthroughs in the nonlinear optics of chalcogenide glasses have led to his demonstrations of new ultrafast optical devices for telecommunications applications, record low-threshold supercontinuum generation sources and on-chip parametric sources. His group reported the first demonstration of on-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering, and holds the record for on-chip SBS gain. His fundamental breakthroughs include the first demonstrations of Bragg soliton and Gap soliton formation in periodic media and of slow-light-enhanced nonlinear optics in photonic crystals.
Publications
Eggleton is the author and coauthor of more than 530 journal publications, including articles in Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Science and Optica and over 200 invited presentations. His journal papers have been cited 26,000 times according to Web of Science with an h-number of 85 (116 in Google Scholar) and has filed over 35 patents.
Awards and honours
He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA), IEEE Photonics, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), and the Australian Academy of Science (AAS).