Marin Soljačić '96

Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics
Focuses on nanophotonics, and on intersections between AI and Physics.
Research Areas
Condensed Matter Theory, Condensed Matter Experiment
headshot of Marin Soljacic
(617) 253-2467
Office: 6C-347
Lab(s): Photonics & Modern Electro-Magnetics Group, Condensed Matter Theory Group
Affiliated Center(s): MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics,
Assistant: Denise Wahkor

Research Interests

  • nanophotonics
  • nonlinear optics
  • artificial intelligence in science

Biographical Sketch

  • Professor; Physics Department, MIT, (2011-
  • Associate Professor; Physics Department, MIT, (2010-2011)
  • A founder of WiTricity Corporation (2007), as well as Lightelligence (2017)
  • Assistant Professor; Physics Department, MIT, (2005-2010)
  • Principal Research Scientist; Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, (2003-2005)
  • Pappalardo Fellow; Physics Department, MIT, (2000-2003)
  • PhD program, Princeton Physics Department (1996-2000)
  • Undergraduate at MIT (physics and also EECS): (1992-1996)
  • Born and K-12 education in Zagreb, Croatia
In the news
Controlling Quantum Randomness Art
In the news

Harnessing the Void: MIT Controls Quantum Randomness For the First Time

Groundbreaking study demonstrates control over quantum fluctuations, unlocking potential for probabilistic computing and ultra-precise field sensing.

Awards & Honors

  • 2024 // Appointed the Cecil and Ida Green Professorship of Physics
  • 2023 // Max Born Award (Optica)
  • 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 // Highly-Cited Researcher by Web of Science
  • 2017 // "The Order of the Croatian Daystar, with the image of Ruđer Bošković", the Croatian President’s top medal for Science
  • 2014 // Blavatnik National Award
  • 2011 // Young Global Leader (YGL) of the World Economic Forum
  • 2008 // MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship
  • 2006 // TR35 Award of the Technology Review: one of top 35 innovators under the age of 35
  • 2005 // Adolph Lomb Medal (OSA) "for the discovery of novel soliton phenomena, and for seminal and innovative work in nonlinear and time dependent photonic crystals."

Key Publications

  • “Biasing the quantum vacuum to control macroscopic probability distributions” Charles Roques-Carmes, Yannick Salamin, Jamison Sloan, Seou Choi, Gustavo Velez, Ethan Koskas, Nicholas Rivera, Steven E. Kooi, John D. Joannopoulos, Marin Soljacic. Science Vol.381, p.205, (2023).

  • “A general theoretical and experimental framework for nanoscale electromagnetism” Yi Yang, Di Zhu, Wei Yan, Akshay Agarwal, Mengjie Zheng, John D. Joannopoulos, Philippe Lalanne, Thomas Christensen , Karl K. Berggren and Marin Soljacic. Nature Vol.576, p.248, (2019).

  • “Tunable Efficient Unitary Neural Networks (EUNN) and their application to RNNs” Li Jing, Yichen Shen, Tena Dubcek, John Peurifoy, Scott Skirlo, Yann LeCun, Max Tegmark, Marin Soljacic. Proceedings of the 34th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Sydney, Australia, PMLR 70, 2017.

  • “Experimental observation of Weyl points” L Lu, Z Wang, D Ye, L Ran, L Fu, JD Joannopoulos, M Soljačić. Science Vol.349, p.622, (2015).

More Publications