Andrea Blanco-Redondo

Biography

Andrea Blanco-Redondo joined the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) in April 2023 as the Florida Photonics Center of Excellence (FPCE) Endowed Professor. She came to CREOL from her previous role of Head of Silicon Photonics Research at Nokia Bell Labs in New Jersey, USA. Prior to that, from 2015 to 2019, she was first a postdoctoral researcher and then the Professor Harry Messel Research Fellow at the School of Physics of the University of Sydney, Australia. From 2007 to 2015 she was photonics researcher and project manager with the Aerospace and Telecom departments of Tecnalia, Spain. She received her PhD in 2014 from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and her MSc in 2007 from the University of Valladolid (Spain), both in Electrical Engineering. 

Her research interests span from nonlinear optics to quantum optics and topological photonics, generally on nanophotonics platforms. Amongst her most significant research achievements are the experimental discovery of a new type of solitary wave, the pure-quartic soliton, and the demonstration of topological protection of quantum photonic states.

She has served as Optica (former OSA) Director at Large from 2020 to 2022 and received the 2018 Optica Ambassador distinction. She was the recipient of the 2016 Geoff Opat Early Career Researcher Prize of the Australian Optical Society and a 2014 Ada Byron Award, a Spanish nationwide award to leading women in technology. She has served as Associate Editor for Optics Continuum, Guest Editor for several Special Issues in esteemed journals and Primary Editor of an upcoming book on Topological Photonics.