Dr. Simon Gross

Dr Simon Gross received his BSc in Electrical Engineering and MSc in Microelectronics from the Vienna University of Technology in Austria.

Simon worked as electronics engineer in the automation and medical device industry. In 2013, he received the PhD in physics from Macquarie University. He was awarded a Macquarie University Research Fellowship and an ARC DECRA. His work has been featured in popular media and he received multiple awards, such as the AOS Wanda Henry Prize, NSW Young Tall Poppy Award and was named as one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 as well as receiving a Menzies Foundation Entrepreneur Fellowship. In 2021 he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship and joined Macquarie University’s School of Engineering.
His research interests include the fundamental interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with dielectrics and the application of ultrafast lasers to optical materials processing, in particular laser direct-writing of photonic waveguide devices for the use in telecommunication, astronomy, sensing, and information processing applications. He has authored and co-authored >200 publications and holds several patents.

Simon is co-founder and CTO of Modular Photonics, a company that commercialises novel 3D photonic components and interconnect solutions to enhance data rates across optical fibres. Modular Photonics’ customers are spread across 4 continents and its technology has received multiple national and international awards, most notably winning the Sydney Engineering Excellence Awards, the 2019 Prism Award, being a Lightwave Innovation Review High-Score Recipient in the category Optical Components and winning the Cabling Innovation and Maintenance Platinum Innovator Award.