Professor Chao He selected as 2025 MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 Asia-Pacific

Innovators Under 35 is a global community of innovators selected by MIT Technology Review who are changing the future of science and technology. The annual list, established in 1999 in honour of MIT Technology Review’s 100th anniversary, recognizes outstanding innovators who are younger than 35. The awards span a wide range of fields, including biotechnology, materials, computer hardware, energy, transportation, communications, and the Internet.

The list consists of individuals identified by MIT Technology Review as doing superb technical work promises to shape the coming decades. The goal is to recognize the development of new technology or the creative application of existing technologies to solve the world’s biggest problems and rewarding ingenious and elegant work that matters to the world at large—not just to peers in a particular field or industry.

Professor Chao He leads the Vectorial Optics and Photonics Group (VOP Group) in the department of Engineering Science. As a leader of a team of researchers developing next generation vectorial light field control technology and a holder of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, Professor He aims to revolutionise high-dimensional light-field manipulation, with an emphasis on vectorial optics and photonics. He has proposed and implemented a “virtual pixel” technology using cascaded tunable optical elements, creating the first dynamically tunable arbitrary elliptical retarder array. This optical system unlocks new opportunities for high-throughput optical manipulation, driving breakthroughs across both information and healthcare technologies—from topologically protected beams with exceptional robustness for photonic computing, to advanced decoding of complex scattered light for precise cancer staging.

His research combines theoretical analysis with practical implementation, delivering new techniques and toolboxes that leads to a new paradigm for analysing complex media as well as the realisation of next-generation optical information technologies. Alongside these scientific breakthroughs, his team has been actively translating laboratory innovations into industrial deployment, with technologies now moving into real-world use.

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Chao HE | Innovators Under 35