Iskandar Sabry

Iskandar Sabry
Name	Iskandar Sabry
Birth date	1983
Birth place	Cairo, Egypt
Occupation	Researcher, engineer, inventor
Alma mater	Cairo University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for	Photonic integrated circuits; quantum sensors; optical communications

Iskandar Sabry

Iskandar Sabry is an Egyptian-born researcher and engineer noted for contributions to photonics, integrated optics, and quantum sensing. He has held positions at leading institutions and collaborated with researchers across United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France. His work links advances in silicon photonics, quantum information science, optical communications, and applied microfabrication to industry applications.

Early life and education

Sabry was born in Cairo and attended El Alsson School before enrolling at Cairo University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He pursued graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), completing a Master of Science and a Ph.D. with research spanning photonics, semiconductor optics, and nanofabrication. During his time at MIT he worked with groups associated with the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and undertook collaborative projects with researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Career

After his doctorate, Sabry joined a research group at Bell Labs before transitioning to an academic appointment at a European technical university affiliated with the European Research Council (ERC). He has been employed by industrial research divisions at multinational firms including Intel, IBM, and Nokia Bell Labs for positions focused on integrated photonics and optical interconnects. Sabry later served as a principal investigator at a national laboratory connected to Agence nationale de la recherche initiatives and as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light.

Research and contributions

Sabry’s research centers on the design, fabrication, and characterization of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) using platforms such as silicon-on-insulator, indium phosphide, and hybrid lithium niobate integration. He developed low-loss waveguide designs and novel heterogenous integration methods that improved device bandwidths for dense wavelength-division multiplexing systems and optical transceivers. His work on on-chip modulators drew on concepts from electro-optic modulation, carrier depletion, and Mach–Zehnder interferometer architectures, yielding devices with enhanced modulation efficiency suitable for data-center interconnects used by Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft.

In quantum sensing and quantum photonics, Sabry contributed to photon-pair sources based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion and four-wave mixing for applications in quantum key distribution with partners from ID Quantique and academic groups at University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. He published experimental demonstrations integrating single-photon detectors such as superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with PIC platforms, addressing coupling efficiency and cryogenic packaging challenges relevant to initiatives at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Space Agency.

Sabry also worked on nonlinear optics in waveguides, investigating second-harmonic generation and frequency comb formation, building on theories developed by researchers at Caltech and the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester. His theoretical contributions incorporated numerical methods from the Finite-Difference Time-Domain and Eigenmode Expansion techniques used by groups at ETH Zurich and TU Delft.

Notable projects and collaborations

Notable projects include an ERC-funded consortium on heterogeneous PIC platforms involving partners such as CSEM, Fraunhofer Society, and imec. Sabry co-led collaborative programs with industrial partners including Cisco Systems and Broadcom to prototype transceiver modules for hyperscale data centers. His cross-disciplinary collaborations extended to quantum communications testbeds with teams at University of Geneva and Technische Universität München supporting field trials for secure metropolitan networks.

He participated in European Union Framework Programme projects alongside universities like EPFL and Politecnico di Milano to develop mid-infrared photonic sensors for environmental monitoring, interfacing with agencies such as European Environment Agency. Internationally, he engaged in joint labs with the Khalifa University and research exchanges with Tsinghua University on microresonator frequency combs and photonic neural networks, connecting to initiatives in artificial intelligence hardware acceleration pursued by NVIDIA and Google DeepMind research teams.

Awards and recognition

Sabry received early-career awards from national science foundations and technology councils, including grants from the Royal Academy of Engineering and an ERC Starting Grant. He was recognized with a young investigator prize by a professional society such as the Optical Society (OSA) or the IEEE Photonics Society for work on integrated modulators and photonic packaging. Industry honors included innovation awards from corporate partners and invitations to keynote at conferences like the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC), and Photonics West.

Personal life and legacy

Outside research, Sabry has been active in mentorship programs linked to STEM outreach organizations and has served on advisory panels for national funding agencies and consortia addressing photonics workforce development. His legacy includes open-source fabrication process recipes and design libraries adopted by academic cleanrooms and startups, as well as a generation of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers now holding positions at institutions such as Imperial College London, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Toronto, and industry labs at Apple and Samsung. His contributions continue to influence developments in integrated photonics, quantum technologies, and optical communications infrastructure.

Category:Photonic engineers Category:Alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology