Dr Maziar Nezhad is a Reader at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Bangor University, where he is also the School's Director of Research. He received his PhD from the University of California San Diego (2007, Photonics), where he investigated the photonic properties of metallo-dielectric structures, including some of the earliest work on the mitigation of losses in plasmonic devices using gain compensation.

After graduation, he continued research in this area at UCSD's Qualcomm Institute (formerly CalIT), which culminated in demonstrating the first 3D subwavelength nanolaser operating at room temperature. In parallel he worked on optical interconnects and resonant devices in silicon photonic systems, including developing processes for fabricating extremely low-loss optical waveguides in silicon.

From 2011-2013 he was a visiting research scientist in the Integrated Photonics Laboratory at RWTH Aachen where he continued work on silicon-based interconnects, ultra-high Q resonators and silicon photonic devices including strained silicon modulators.

He is an EPSRC Innovation Fellow and his current research activities include nanophotonics, nano-optomechanics, optical MEMS, micro-robotics, plasmonics, group IV photonics (silicon, germanium, diamond), nanofabrication and the application of photonics in other disciplines.

Several projects in the areas of combined nanophotonic and MEMS devices for telecommunications and sensing are available. While funded PhD positions may be available on a case by case basis, in general potential PhD students should have an external source for funding thier PhD study.