Hayk Harutyunyan works in a world where nothing behaves the way it does in everyday life.
It’s called nanophotonics, where light interacts with matter on an almost unimaginably tiny scale. “The most important thing about light is that it’s a wave,” says Harutyunyan, a Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Emory’s Physics Department. “And if you try to focus a wave into a small volume, that volume cannot be smaller than the wavelength of the light. So that limits the things we can do with light.” Nanophotonics opens up the possibility of higher-speed data communication, quantum computing at far higher speeds than contemporary computers and even targeted medical treatments. A recent seed grant from Emory’s University Research Committee (URC) allowed him to research new light sources and explore ways to make interactions with materials produce more powerful outputs.
Read the full story here: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2026/05/er_urc_harutyunyan_research_01-05-2026/story.html