Mark Brongersma is a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received his doctorate in materials science from the FOM Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1998. From 1998 to 2001, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

During this time, he coined the term “plasmonics” for a new device technology that uses the unique optical properties of nanoscale metallic structures to route and manipulate light at the nanoscale. His current research focuses on developing and analyzing nanostructured materials used in nanoscale electronic and photonic devices.

Brongersma has received a National Science Foundation Career Award, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the International Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences (Physics) for his work on plasmonics. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, SPIE, and the American Physical Society.