Kanti Jain received the Ph.D. in electrical engineering and solid-state physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1975, M.S. from the same institution in 1970, and B.Tech. (Hons.) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1969. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at M.I.T. from 1975 to 1977.

Upon completing his formal education, Jain started a career in industry. Over 30 years, he worked at Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Raychem. He went on to found his own company, Anvik Corporation, which developed technologies for large-area lithography. Today, this technology is used in flat-panel displays and televisions. In 2006, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his today Professor Emeritus.

He is a Fellow of OSA, SPIE, AAAS, and IEEE; elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering; and recipient of numerous awards. In 2008, he received OSA’s David Richardson Medal “for pioneering contributions to the development of high-resolution optical microlithography technologies, especially for the invention and development of excimer laser lithography and systems for production of microelectronic devices.: