Chao He BEng MEng MRes DPhil (Oxon)

Chao He is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford (2025–present), where he is a full faculty member in the Department of Engineering Science and holds three fellowships. He completed his DPhil in the same department from 2018–2020 (two years).

Group |  He leads the Vectorial Optics and Photonics Group (VOP Group) in the department, focusing on optical techniques for vectorial beam manipulation — including structured light, structured matter, adaptive optics, and polarization sensing — with applications in biomedical diagnosis and integrated photonic circuits.

Output |  He has published over 100 scientific papers, including first- and corresponding- authored papers in Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Light: Science & Applications, Elight, Optica, Advanced Photonics, etc.

Reviewer |  He serves as a reviewer of Nature Photonics, Nature Sensors, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Light: Science & Applications, Elight, Optica, etc.

Editorship |  He serves as Guest Editor-in-Chief and/or Editorial Board Member for various journals, including Light: Science & Applications, Light: Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Photonics Nexus, and Journal of Optics.

Award |  He has received various awards, including the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 (2025, TR35, Asia-Pacific); Rising Star in Optics (2024, IOP Publishing, UK); and has been listed in the World’s Top 2% Scientists (Scopus) for outstanding research impact and academic contributions (2023/2024/2025, Stanford University, USA).

Engagement |  He has been invited to deliver Plenary/Keynote/Invited talks at international optics conferences over thirty times, and has served as General Chair or Co-Chair multiple times. Notably, OIC 2024 (for which he was General Chair) was highlighted by UNESCO’s International Day of Light.

Funding |  He independently led several research grants with a total value exceeding £3.2 million, followed by a commercialised investment valued at over £1.5 million.

Music |  Outside of academia, he has independently released 2 original music albums, taking full responsibility for lyrics, composition, vocals, and production.

Vectorial Optics; Structured Light; Structured Matter

• Polarisation sensing
• Structured light
• Structured matter
• Microscopy
• Adaptive optics
• Optical materials
• Tissue optics

An Wang, Yifei Ma, Yunqi Zhang, Zimo Zhao, Yuxi Cai, Xuke Qiu, Bowei Dong & Chao He. Perturbation-resilient integer arithmetic using optical skyrmions Nature Photonics (2025). 

We report the first demonstration of skyrmion-based discrete operations in photonic computing, positioning skyrmions as robust operators for high-density and noise-resilient information processing. This achievement represents the first practical application of optical skyrmions, unlocking a new paradigm in high-dimensional photonic computing with broad implications for next-generation optical communication and interconnection. Remarkably, the entire team—young researchers with an average age of 27—were all members of my VOP group.

I am interested to hear from potential students who have interests in research areas spanning from vectorial beam generation/analysing/correction techniques to various related applications.