Sergio Carbajo Awarded 2026 Optica Adolph Lomb Medal

The society announced the Lomb Medal and 21 other awards on February 19, recognizing Carbajo for his “development of first-principles methodologies and seminal contributions to controlling ultrafast wavepackets in quantum matter with unprecedented space-time precision at elementary scales.”

Carbajo holds a joint appointment in the Physics & Astronomy Department at UCLA and is a visiting professor at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He is the founder and director of the Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative, a multi-institutional research consortium dedicated to advancing light-driven science and technology.

His research focuses on enhancing the understanding and control of light-matter interactions at ultrafast speeds and quantum scales. He has developed new methods for visualizing quantum dynamics — sometimes described as “quantum filmmaking” — and compact, high-brightness sources across the spectrum. These advances have enabled applications in quantum information, molecular imaging and energy research. He also leads initiatives in adaptive quantum sensing and scalable photonic quantum architectures.

Carbajo also serves as the inclusive excellence officer for UCLA’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and founded the Queered Science and Technology Center.

He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, contributed to a dozen patents and launched startups in the photonics, quantum and energy spaces. Among the many honors he has received are the Rising Stars of Light Award, the Humboldt Fellowship and a pair of young investigator awards from the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Founded in 1916, Optica is an international organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. The Lomb Medal, established in 1940, recognizes outstanding contributions to optics within 10 years of a recipient’s highest degree. Previous recipients of the medal include UCLA adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering Eli Yablonovitch and UCLA professor emeritus of physics and astronomy C. Kumar Patel.