Rate My Professor Saif Islam

Professor Saif Islam is Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He joined the university in 2004 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2008 and full professor in 2011. He previously served as department vice chair from 2011 to 2013 and as department chair from 2017 to 2020. He also served as director of the Northern California Nanotechnology Center from 2012 to 2015 and as director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at UC Davis from 2022 to 2025. He was reappointed as department chair effective in 2025. Professor Islam earned a B.Sc. in physics from Middle East Technical University in 1994, an M.Sc. in physics from Bilkent University in 1996, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and 2001, respectively. Prior to joining UC Davis, he worked in optical networking research at JDS Uniphase Corporation and in quantum science research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

His research focuses on integrated nanodevices and nanosystems, including ultra-fast semiconductor optoelectronics, synthesis and integration of low-dimensional semiconductor and oxide nanostructures, photonics, sensors, detectors, and materials for harsh environments. He has demonstrated pioneering techniques such as nanowire bridging for nanoelectronic and nanophotonic devices and photon-trapping structures in silicon and germanium photodetectors. Professor Islam is a fellow of the IEEE (2020), AAAS (2018), National Academy of Inventors (2014), OSA (2018), and SPIE (2017). He received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award, the UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, the SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award in 2024, and multiple UC Davis faculty research and teaching awards. He has co-founded two startup companies based on his inventions and holds numerous patents. He has served in editorial roles for several IEEE and other journals and organized numerous conferences in nanoscience and photonics.