Mark L. Brongersma

Mark Luitzen Brongersma (born 1969), is a physicist and materials scientist specializing in nanophotonics, plasmonics, metamaterials, and optoelectronics. He is the Stephen Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics at Stanford University. Brongersma has worked in the fields of nanophotonics and plasmonics, having coined the terms "plasmonics" and "Mie-tronics", and has made contributions to the development of optical metasurfaces and atomically thin optics.

Early life and education Brongersma was born in Geldrop, Netherlands in 1969. He earned his Ph.D. in materials science in 1998 from the FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam, where he conducted research on light–matter interactions at the nanoscale. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology from 1998 to 2001.

Career At Stanford, Brongersma leads a research group exploring new ways to manipulate light using nanoscale structures. His group focuses on metasurfaces, plasmonic devices, and atomically thin optical materials for sensing, imaging, and energy applications. He also serves as a faculty co-director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center (SPRC).

His research demonstrated that metasurfaces can serve as scalable building blocks for optical systems, including transparent sensors and high-resolution imaging technologies.

Research contributions Plasmonics and Mie-tronics: Brongersma coined the term "Mie-tronics" to describe optical phenomena in high-index dielectric nanostructures, expanding the field of plasmonics. Optical Metasurfaces: His team developed metasurface-based lenses and sensors for compact, efficient, and tunable optical systems.