Original press release published here
BOSTON, Mass. – June 30, 2021 – Today, Lightmatter announced CEO Nick Harris has been named to MIT Technology Review’s prestigious annual list of Innovators Under 35. Every year, the world-renowned media company has recognized a list of exceptionally talented technologists whose work has great potential to transform the world.
As a PhD candidate and then post doctoral fellow at MIT, Harris paved the way for a new paradigm in semiconductor chip architecture and the next transition for large-scale computing. His doctoral thesis, “Programmable nanophotonics for quantum information processing and artificial intelligence,” laid the groundwork for innovation at Lightmatter – chips that use photons instead of electrons to compute. Most recently, Harris’ team announced Passage, a new wafer-scale solution to enable computer chips to communicate at unprecedented speeds; Envise, the world’s first, general-purpose photonic AI accelerator; and Idiom, software that interfaces with deep learning frameworks and models to optimize inference speed and accuracy.
Tim Maher, Managing Editor of MIT Technology Review, said: “We get more than 500 nominations for the list every year, and getting that list down to 35—a task not only for the editors at MIT Technology Review but also for our 30+ judges—is one of the hardest things we do each year. We love the way the final list always shows what a wide variety of people there are, all around the world, working on creative solutions to some of humanity's hardest problems.”
Learn more about this year’s honorees on the MIT Technology Review website here and in the July/August issue, which goes live online June 30. The honorees are also featured at the upcoming EmTech MIT conference, MIT Technology Review’s annual flagship event that offers a carefully curated perspective on the most significant developments of the year, with a focus on understanding their potential business and societal impact. EmTech MIT will be held online September 28-30, 2021. Click here to learn more about the event.
Contacts: Adolph Hunter lightmatter@strangebrewstrategies.com