John E Bowers holds the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology and is the Director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency and a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Bowers received his MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University. Before his time at UC Santa Barbara, Bowers worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories and Honeywell.

Bowers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, and the American Physical Society. He is a recipient of the Nick Holonyak, Jr. and John Tyndall Awards, the IEEE LEOS William Streifer Award, and the South Coast Business and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award. He and coworkers received the ACE Award for Most Promising Technology for the hybrid silicon laser in 2007. Bowers' research interests are in silicon photonic integrated circuits for the next generation of coherent optical systems.