Mario J. Paniccia is director of the Photonics Technology Lab at Intel, and currently directs a group in the area of Silicon Photonics. The team is focused on developing silicon-based photonic building blocks for future use in enterprise and data center communications. They have pioneered activities in silicon photonics that have led to the development of the first silicon modulator with bandwidth greater than 1GHz, the first continuous wave silicon laser breakthrough, and the first electrically pumped hybrid silicon laser in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Paniccia was named R&D Magazine's 2008 Scientist of the Year, and Scientific American named Paniccia one of the top 50 researchers in 2004. He was interviewed for SPIE Newsroom by Rich Donnelly.

Interview with Mario Paniccia on silicon photonics, recorded at Photonics West 2009. (QuickTime)

Mario Paniccia talks about the R&D Scientist of the Year Award.