Rate My Professor Mark L. Brongersma

Mark L. Brongersma is the Stephen Harris Professor and a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves by courtesy as Professor of Applied Physics. He is the Director of the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM). He received his PhD in Materials Science from the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1998. From 1998 to 2001, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology, during which time he coined the term “Plasmonics” to describe a device technology that exploits the optical properties of nanoscale metallic structures to route and manipulate light at the nanoscale. His research focuses on the development and physical analysis of nanostructured materials for applications in nanoscale electronic and photonic devices.

Brongersma joined the Stanford faculty in 2001. He has received numerous honors, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2004, the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences (Physics) in 2010, and election as a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2008, the American Physical Society in 2010, the SPIE in 2011, and the Materials Research Society in 2023. In 2020, he was appointed the Stephen Harris Professor, and in 2025 he received the A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize. He is a co-founder of Rolith, Inc., and has served in roles such as Deputy Director of GLAM. His work has established him as a leading figure in plasmonics and nanophotonics.