Ritesh Agarwal, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering in Penn Engineering, has received the 2021-22 George H. Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research for his “groundbreaking contributions to materials for applications in integrated photonics and electronics.”

The Heilmeier Award honors a Penn Engineering faculty member whose work is scientifically meritorious and has high technological impact and visibility. It is named for the late George H. Heilmeier, a Penn Engineering alumnus and member of the school’s Board of Advisors, whose technological contributions include the development of liquid crystal displays and whose honors include the National Medal of Science and the Kyoto Prize.

Dr. Agarwal’s current research interests include exploring structural, chemical, optical, and electronic properties of low-dimensional systems and development of new probes to study complex phases of natural and engineered materials. Recently, his group has focused on studying the role of topology in electronic and optical systems and is working to engineer light-matter interactions in such systems to fabricate on-chip chiral photonic devices that can generate, transmit and detect more information than conventional systems by using the spin and orbital angular momentum modes of light.