He received his graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. From 2000 to 2001 he was with Nanovation Technologies as a designer and product manager for photonic devices. From 2001 to 2003 he was a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University working on self-assembly, biomedical devices (he co-invented the method resulting in the founding of Claros Diagnostics Inc. (acquired by OPKO Health)), and organic devices. He has been an assistant professor (2003-2008), an associate professor (2008-2012), and an affiliate professor (2012-present) in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington. He was with Google from 2010 to 2014 where he was a Google Distinguished Engineer and a Director at Google [x]. He is the creator of Google Glass. He founded, built, and led the Google Glass program from 2010 till 2013. He is also the co-founder of the Smart Contact Lens program at Google. Babak’s areas of interest span high-tech with social impact, novel communication and computing paradigms, biotechnology, nano and micro technology, photonics, and engineering at scale. Thousands of articles have been written worldwide reporting on Babak’s work.
Research areas include photonics & nano devices and biosystems.