Rashid Zia (PI)

Rashid Zia is the Dean of the College and Professor of Engineering & Physics at Brown University. As Dean of the College, he is the senior undergraduate academic officer, and oversees a broad range of administrative departments, including the Center for Careers and Life After Brown (CareerLAB), the Curricular Resource Center, the Office of International Programs, the Science Center, the Sheridan Center for Teaching & Learning, and the Swearer Center for Public Service.

His research group works at the interface of ele­ctrical engineering, materials science, optical physics, and physical chemistry to study the interaction of light and matter. For this work, he has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government for young researchers. He is a Fellow of The Optical Society, and successfully served as the lead investigator for the Air Force's Quantum Metaphotonics & Metamaterials MURI program, a large-scale six-year research grant that brought together leading research groups from Brown, Caltech, MIT, Penn, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin. His current research focuses on the integration of computational and experimental science in order to enable new photonic devices as well as strengthen and expand access to higher education.