harry a atwater jr is a howard hughes professor and professor of applied physics and materials science at the california institute of technology since 2014 he is the editorinchief of the journal acs photonics published by the american chemical societyhis research interests center around two interwoven research themes photovoltaics and solar energy and plasmonics and optical metamaterials atwater and his group have been active in photovoltaics research for more than 20 years they have created new photovoltaic devices including the silicon wire array solar cell and layertransferred fabrication approaches to iiiv semiconductor iiiv and multijunction cells as well as making advances in plasmonic light absorber structures for iiiv compound and silicon thin films his research groups developments in the solar and plasmonics field have been featured in scientific american and in research papers in science nature materials nature photonics and advanced materialsatwater received his sb 1981 sm 1983 and phd 1987 in electrical engineering from the massachusetts institute of technology he serves as director of the doe energy frontier research center on lightmaterial interactions in solar energy conversion and was named director of the resnick institute for science energy and sustainability caltechs largest endowed research program focused on energy atwater is founder and chief technical advisor for alta devices a venturebacked company in santa clara ca developing a transformational high efficiencylow cost photovoltaics technology and aonex corporation a compound semiconductor materials company he has also served an editorial board member for surface review and letters professor atwater has actively served the materials community in various capacities including material research society meeting chair 1997 materials research society president 2000 avs electronic materials and processing division chair 1999 and board of trustees of the gordon research conferences in 2008 he served as chair for the gordon research conference on plasmonicsatwater is an mrs fellow and has been honored by awards including the 2012 eni award for renewable and nonconventional energy mrs kavli lecturer in nanoscience in 2010 popular mechanics breakthrough award 2010 joop los fellowship from the dutch society for fundamental research on matter in 2005 at t foundation award 1990 nsf presidential young investigator award 1989 ibm faculty development award 19891990 member bohmische physical society 1990 ibm postdoctoral fellowship 1987