Professor Benjamin Eggleton
Winner: Physics and Astronomy Category, NSW Scientist of the Year Awards

Professor Eggleton is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. He is also an ARC Federation Fellow and heads the Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS) at the University of Sydney.

Professor Eggleton is regarded as a world leading researcher and pioneer in the fields of optical physics and photonics, which is the use of light for the transmission and processing of information in communications technologies.

Professor Eggleton's research has consistently generated new science at the frontiers of optical physics. He has pioneered fundamental studies into the optics of man-made nanostructured optical materials, known as photonic crystals. His research has led directly to the realisation of new optical devices for telecommunications applications.

Professor Eggleton pioneered optical devices based on a new class of nanostructured optical fibres, referred to as ‘photonic crystal fibres’. In this context, he pioneered the new field of optofluidics, which is the marriage of photonics and microfluidics, which deals with the manipulation of fluids on the sub-millimetre scale. His research demonstrated innovative optical fibres whose properties can be dynamically tuned using microfluidic control. He recently extended this concept to tunable integrated photonic circuits. This research is now being pursued by dozens of groups around the world and underpins new technologies in bio-medical sensing.

Professor Eggleton invented and developed the Tunable Dispersion Compensator, a device which compensates for pulse distortions in high-speed optical communications systems. This device was marketed by Lucent Technologies in the USA and was the recipient of an R&D100 award. This device was the first technology of its kind to be commercialised and deployed in optical networks. These devices are still in production, have been deployed worldwide in installed optical networks, and will continue to play a key role in all future optical transmission architectures.

Professor Eggleton’s current research focuses on the development of an ultrafast photonic chip, a crucial device for the development of next generation communication systems. In this context, his team has reported numerous breakthroughs, including demonstrating that the speed of light could be slowed down. His team recently demonstrated switching of optical signals at 640Gb/s (i.e. 640 thousand Megabits per second) in a monolithic glass device. This is about 60 times faster than the switches currently in Australia’s telecommunication networks.

Professor Eggleton has received numerous awards for his research. In 2007, he received a Cosmos Magazine Bright Spark Award, which are awarded to Australia's top 10 young scientists under the age of 40. In 2007 he was recipient of the Australian Academy of Science’s Pawsey Medal; in 2004 he was awarded the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Australian Physical Scientist of the Year; and in 2003 he was recipient of the ICO Prize from the International Commission for Optics. Professor Eggleton is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and currently serves as President of the Australian Optical Society.