Zhigang Chen is a Professor at San Francisco State University, and a specially-appointed Cheung Kong Scholar at Nankai University by the Ministry of Education in China. He earned his M.S. in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, and his Ph.D. in physics from Bryn Mawr College in 1995. After two years of postdoctoral work, he was promoted to the rank of Senior Research Staff Member at Princeton University in 1997. He joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University in 1998, where he received early tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor in 2002 and full professor in 2006. Dr. Chen's accomplishments in research and scholarly work are centered on basic developments and discoveries that he and his students have made in the field of nonlinear optics and photonics. His research group has established a track record with many pioneering experimental work on photorefractive solitons, incoherent solitons, discrete solitons, optically-induced photonic lattices, bandgap guidance, and optical surface and defect states. He has maintained a cutting-edge research program at a non-Ph.D. institute which enjoys worldwide recognition in the scientific community active in his field of research, as evidenced by numerous invitations to speak or chair at professional meetings and to serve as referee or adjudicator for journals and research proposals. He has published 4 invited book chapters and about 250 scientific papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, many in leading journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physical Review Letters and Optics Letters. He has supervised over 20 undergraduate and M.S. graduate students - many of them co-authored papers in top-rated journals and delivered talks at conferences such as CLEO, IQEC, and the OSA Annual Meetings. His research work has been reported in Science, Physics Today, Inside R&D, Laser Focus World, Technology Research News, and has been featured frequently in the premier optics magazine Opt. & Photonics News as one of the most significant breakthroughs in optics for the years of 1996, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2006-09. He has received about 2500 citations in literature already with an H- index of 30. http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~zchen/ Prof. Morandotti has published 1 co-edited book, 1 invited book chapter and 1 invited review article, some 250 publications, in total, including over 75 research papers in refereed journals (published, in press or accepted, of whose over 25 in Physical Review Letter and Nature Photonics). About 100 invited presentations at leading research centers and International conferences. http://www.phys.umontreal.ca/plasma/plasmaquebec/Universites_Membres/reguliers/Morandotti_en.htm
