Marin Soljačić is a Professor of Physics at MIT. He is a founder of WiTricity Corporation (2007), LuxLabs (2017), as well as Lightelligence (2017). His main research interests are in artificial intelligence as well as electromagnetic phenomena, focusing on nanophotonics, non-linear optics, and wireless power transfer. He is a recipient of the Adolph Lomb medal from the Optical Society of America (2005), and the TR35 award of the Technology Review magazine (2006). In 2008, he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship "genius" grant. He is an international member of the Croatian Academy of Engineering since 2009. In 2011 he became a Young Global Leader (YGL) of the World Economic Forum. In 2014, he was awarded Blavatnik National Award, as well as Invented Here! (Boston Patent Law Association). In 2017, he was awarded "The Order of the Croatian Daystar, with the image of Ruđer Bošković", the Croatian President's top medal for Science. In 2017, the Croatian President also awarded him with "The Order of the Croatian Interlace" medal. He was also Highly Cited Researcher according to WoS for 2019,2020,2021&2022. In 2023, he got Max Born award from Optica.

His talk will consist of two somewhat separate parts. In the first part, he will discuss certain aspects of radiation phenomena that occurs when fast electrons interact with nanophotonic structures. In particular, nanophotonic methods provide intriguing options for manipulating scintillation phenomena. He will outline recent developments in this domain, along with his theoretical framework for modeling these occurrences, supported by his experimental findings. Additionally, Smith-Purcell radiation, characterized by fast electrons interacting with nano-structured materials to produce light, offers a broad spectrum of possibilities for creation of novel light sources. He will present some of his recent results in this field.

In the second part of his talk, he will discuss certain intersections between the field of AI and the field of photonics (and science in general). He will start by discussing photonic-enhanced hardware for AI. He will also present some novel AI techniques for photonics and physics in general. He will focus on certain interpretable AI techniques, including symbolic regression. Also, his new concept of machine-learned chemical property (which he calls "topogivity") will be presented: roughly, topogivity of a given atom presents that material's propensity to form topological materials.

His talk will take place on July 26, 2023 at 11 am in the Leuchs-Russell Auditorium.