Roberto Morandotti Becomes First Canadian Physicist to Win the Max Born Award

The Max Born Award has been presented by Optica - formerly the Optical Society of America - since 1982. It recognizes outstanding contributions to physical optics and carries with it the legacy of Max Born himself, the German-British physicist whose probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics won him the Nobel Prize in 1954. In four decades of the award's existence, no researcher working in Canada had ever received it. That changed with Roberto Morandotti.

Morandotti is a professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) in Quebec and scientific co-director of the Ultrahigh Speed Light Manipulation Laboratory and the QUALITY facility. His work spans integrated quantum photonics, nonlinear optics, ultrafast lasers, and terahertz science - a breadth that is unusual, and a coherence that runs through all of it: making quantum and optical phenomena that exist in theory also exist on a chip or in a device.

"It is a profound honour to receive the Max Born Award, and an even greater one to be the first researcher in Canada to do so," Morandotti said. "Max Born's work laid the foundations for the quantum technologies that are reshaping our world today."

From optical solitons to quantum light on a chip

Morandotti's career is structured around firsts. Early in his work, he provided the first experimental proof of optical solitons in discrete, engineered waveguide structures - light pulses that maintain their shape as they travel through a medium. He then went on to recreate in photonic systems several phenomena normally observed in quantum or solid-state physics: Anderson localization, Bloch oscillations, and quantum walks. In each case, the translation from abstract physics to a physical photonic device required solving nontrivial engineering and materials problems.

His most consequential contribution may be the first demonstration of complex quantum light states generated directly on a chip. Quantum communication protocols and quantum computing both rely on photons that carry more than binary information - states where each particle encodes multiple dimensions of quantum information simultaneously. Getting those states to arise from an integrated chip, rather than large and fragile laboratory setups, was a prerequisite for practical deployment. Morandotti's group achieved that milestone, bringing quantum communication and ultra-secure data transfer significantly closer to real-world application.

Ultrafast lasers and terahertz technology

In ultrafast laser technology, Morandotti developed a new laser architecture producing exceptionally stable and tunable light pulses. These sources now serve as the basis for next-generation optical processors and photonic neural networks - systems that perform computation at the speed of light rather than via electrons in silicon.

His contributions to terahertz science are equally extensive. Terahertz (THz) radiation sits between microwave and infrared frequencies and has applications in imaging, spectroscopy, and materials characterization. Morandotti's group designed powerful THz sources, novel waveguides for guiding THz waves, and built the first THz Faraday isolator - a device that controls the direction of THz wave propagation, a basic requirement for building THz circuits. He also introduced single-shot THz imaging, capable of capturing events occurring in trillionths of a second. These tools are now enabling research in materials science and security screening that was previously impractical.

A career of mentorship and recognition

Beyond his own research, Morandotti has accumulated more than 64,000 citations and holds a Tier I Canada Research Chair - the highest designation in the federal research chairs program. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and multiple international scientific societies including Optica, the American Physical Society, IEEE, AAAS, SPIE, and the Institute of Physics. His previous awards include the IEEE Quantum Electronics Award, the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, the NSERC Synergy Award, the NSERC Brockhouse Prize, and two of Quebec's highest scientific honors: the Acfas Urgel-Archambault Award and the Prix du Quebec Marie-Victorin.

He has mentored over 220 researchers from more than 30 countries. Several have gone on to found companies in the quantum and photonics space, including Ki3 Photonics and Hyperlight.

"A pioneer in quantum photonics both in Quebec and across Canada, he has brought national and international repute to INRS through his scientific leadership and the impact of his discoveries," said Isabelle Delisle, Scientific Director of INRS.

About the Max Born Award

Established in 1982 by the Optical Society of America (now Optica), the Max Born Award honors the legacy of Max Born (1882-1970), whose work on quantum mechanics - particularly the probabilistic interpretation of the wave function - remains foundational to modern physics. The award is given for outstanding contributions to physical optics and is considered one of the field's most significant international distinctions.