He studied at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he obtained a B.Sc. in 1978 in mathematics and PhD, M.Sc. & B.Sc, in electrical engineering (1983). He was a research assistant at MIT and an industrial co-op student at IBM. From 1982 he was at the Bell Laboratories hired in 1993 as a distinguished member of the technical staff. From 1996 to 2002, he was a senior research scientist at the NEC Laboratories in Princeton. From 2002, as
Quain Professor of Physics at University College London (UCL), he helped to found the
London Centre for Nanotechnology, where he acted as director until March 2015. His current technical focus is on the implications of photon science and nanotechnology for information processing and health care. He is a board member of Bio Nano Consulting. Currently, he is the director of synchrotron radiation and nanotechnology at the Paul Scherrer Institute. == Research ==