Y. Fainman is the Cymer and Distinguished Professor in ECE at UCSD. He received MSc and PhD degrees from Technion in 1979 and 1983, respectively. He directs the Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics group’s research in nanophotonics engineering for information processing.  He contributed over 280 manuscripts and 450 conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of the Society, IEEE, and SPIE, and a recipient of Gutvirt Prize, Brown Award, Gabor Award, Emmett N. Leith Medal, and Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize.

Fainman and his Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics Group helped to exploit near field optical phenomena in engineering nanophotonic technologies for optical information and signal processing. His current research is focused on development of nanophotonic technologies compatible with CMOS manufacturing. Current projects include nanoscale resonant optical phenomena for filtering, modulation and emission of light, quantum emitters, chip-scale integrated spectrometers and transducers for medical diagnosis, and nonlinear optical microscopy for deep brain imaging.