Herbert Winful earned a BS in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a PhD from the University of Southern California in 1981. From 1980 to 1986 he was a Principal Member of Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories in Waltham, MA. He joined the EECS department at the University of Michigan as an associate professor in 1987, became a full professor in 1992, and was named a Thurnau Professor in 1993. In 2019 he was named the Joseph E. and Anne P. Rowe Professor of Electrical Engineering.
He has made fundamental contributions to nonlinear fiber optics, nonlinear optics in periodic structures, the nonlinear dynamics of laser arrays, the propagation of single-cycle pulses, and the physics of tunneling.
He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. His many awards include the 2020 IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship, the Amoco/University Teaching Award, the State of Michigan Teaching Award, the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence and Service Excellence Awards, the EECS Professor of the Year Award (twice), the EECS Outstanding Achievement Award, the Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the Tau Beta Pi Distinguished Professor award.
Main Fields of Interest: Nonlinear Optics, Photonic Crystals, Ultrafast Optics, Tunneling Time, Laser Arrays