Keynote Speaker
Dr. Eric Mazur
Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Chair of Applied Physics at Harvard University, Member of the Faculty of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Past President of the Optical Society. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics in the Physics Department at Harvard University. Mazur founded several companies and plays an active role in industry.
Dr. Mazur came to Harvard University in 1982 after obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. In 1984, he joined the faculty and obtained tenure six years later. Dr. Mazur has made important contributions to spectroscopy, light scattering, the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with materials, and nanophotonics. Dr. Mazur holds Honorary Doctorates from the Ecole Polytechnique and the University of Montreal, Universidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos, Lima, Peru, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Eric Mazur has received numerous awards, including the Esther Hoffman Beller Award from the Optical Society of America and the Millikan Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. In 2014, Mazur became the inaugural recipient of the Minerva Prize for Advancements in Higher Education. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society, of the American Physical Society, and of the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is a Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands and a Member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He has held appointments as Visiting Professor or Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Leuven in Belgium, National Taiwan University in Taiwan, Carnegie Mellon University, and Hong Kong University.
Dr. Mazur has served on numerous committees and councils, including advisory and visiting committees for the National Science Foundation, and has chaired and organized national and international scientific conferences. He serves as a consultant to industry in the electronics and telecommunications industry. In 2006, he founded SiOnyx, a company that is commercializing black silicon, a new form of silicon developed in Mazur’s laboratory. In 2011, he founded Learning Catalytics, a company that uses data analytics to improve learning in the classroom. In 2013, the company was acquired by Pearson. Mazur serves on the Scientific Advisory Panel for Allied Minds, a pre-seed investment company creating partnerships with key universities to fund corporate spin-outs in early-stage technology companies.
In addition to his work in optical physics, Mazur has been very active in education. In 1990, he began developing Peer Instruction, a method for teaching large lecture classes interactively. He is the author of Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual (Prentice Hall, 1997), a book explaining how to teach interactively large lecture classes. In 2006, he helped produce the award-winning DVD Interactive Teaching. Dr.
Mazur’s teaching method has developed a large following, both nationally and internationally, and has
been adopted across many disciplines.
Dr. Mazur is the author or co-author of 380 scientific publications, 52 patents, and several books, including the Principles and Practice of Physics (Pearson, 2015), a book that presents a groundbreaking new approach to teaching introductory calculus-based physics. Mazur is a sought-after speaker on optics and on education.
