Rana receives research excellence award

Farhan Rana, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been recognized as one of six winners of the Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award for 2016. The award is given in recognition of his research contributions and leadership. Nominated by the School, Prof. Rana was selected by a committee of recognized senior researchers and previous award winners within the College.

“Farhan is a leader in the photonic and electronic materials area -- a visionary who helps all of us at Cornell stay on the right path,” said ECE Director Clif Pollock. “In the last eight years he has produced a remarkable stream of high-quality publications on ultrafast optical/terahertz spectroscopy of nano materials and devices, graphene and 2D materials, modelocked semiconductor lasers, terahertz and plasmonic devices, that are widely cited and have had a huge impact in their areas. One paper led to the creation of a funded program at ONR, another looks like it might spawn a program at DARPA.”  

Prof. Rana established and leads the semiconductor optoelectronics research group focusing on semiconductor optoelectronic devices, terahertz devices, optical and terahertz ultrafast spectroscopy, experimental condensed matter physics and the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor nanostructures.

“Farhan has worked on a variety of different things and in every area he has produced seminal papers which change the direction of that field,” continued Pollock. “His work is widely recognized as being deep and impactful, his papers are considered to be the “gold standard” in the words of a UC Berkley faculty working in his area, and not iterative or incremental. There seems to be no limit to his domain! Farhan is an incredible researcher here at Cornell. I can think of no one more deserving of this recognition.”

The underlying themes behind most of Prof. Rana’s research includes the engineering of the properties of electrons and photons in semiconductor micro and nano structures to realize novel devices, study new science at small scales in both space (micro- and nano-sized devices) and time (ultrafast devices) and use novel physics to solve engineering problems and tackle scientific challenges in the development of new technologies.