Shanhui Fan

Shanhui Fan is the Joseph and Hon Mai Goodman Professor in the School of Engineering, a Professor of Electrical Engineering, a Professor of Applied Physics (by courtesy), and a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. His research interests are in fundamental studies of nanophotonic structures, especially photonic crystals, plasmonic structures, and meta-materials, and applications of these structures in energy and information technology applications.

As of 2026, Fan has published over 800 refereed journal articles, has given over 400 plenary/keynote/invited talks, and holds more than 90 U.S. patents. He is a co-founder of Flexcompute, aiming to commercialize high-speed engineering computations, and a co-founder of Skycool Systems, aiming to commercialize radiative cooling technology. Fan received a National Science Foundation Career Award (2002), a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2003), the U. S. National Academy of Sciences W. O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research (2007), the Adolph Lomb Medal from the Optical Society of America (2007), a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the U. S. Department of Defense (2017), a Simons Investigator in Physics (2021), and the R. W. Wood Prize from the Optica (2022).

In addition to his membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, the Optica, the SPIE, and the National Academy of Inventors.

He did his undergraduate study in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China and received his Ph. D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and then a Research Scientist at MIT before he joined the Stanford faculty in 2001.