Dr. Will Whitney

Alumni - Industry and Private Sector

626-395-3826



Dr. Whitney is currently a Senior Lidar Engineer, Metamaterials at Lumotive, a Seattle-based startup developing next-generation solid-state lidar sensors based on electrically reconfigurable metasurfaces. His work focuses on nanophotonic device design, as well as materials development and nanostructure fabrication.

He received his PhD in Physics from Caltech in 2018. His research focus was the intersection of nanophotonics and materials physics, specifically understanding light-matter interactions in optically resonant nanostructures and nanomaterials, with the goal of achieving dynamic, electrical control of light. Will was an NDSEG fellow and received his B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Cornell University.

Available Publications


Tunable intraband optical conductivity and polarization-dependent epsilon-near-zero behavior in black phosphorus

Souvik Biswas, William S. Whitney, Meir Y. Grajower, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Hans A. Bechtel, George R. Rossman, Harry A. Atwater
Science Advances (2021) - Metamaterials Metasurfaces

Anisotropic Quantum Well Electro-Optics in Few-Layer Black Phosphorus

Michelle C. Sherrott, William S. Whitney, Deep Jariwala, Souvik Biswas, Cora M. Went, Joeson Wong, George R. Rossman, and Harry A. Atwater
Nano Letters (2019) - 2D Materials

Materials challenges for the Starshot lightsail

Harry A. Atwater, Artur R. Davoyan, Ognjen Ilic, Deep Jariwala, Michelle C. Sherrott,
Cora M. Went, William S. Whitney and Joeson Wong
Nature Materials (2018) - Starshot

Gate-Variable Mid-Infrared Optical Transitions in a (Bi1−xSbx)2Te3 Topological Insulator

William S. Whitney, Victor W. Brar, Yunbo Ou, Yinming Shao, Artur R. Davoyan, D. N. Basov, Ke He, Qi-Kun Xue, and Harry A. Atwater
Nano Letters (2017) - Photovoltaics

Field Effect Optoelectronic Modulation of Quantum-Confined Carriers in Black Phosphorus

William S. Whitney, Michelle C. Sherrott, Deep Jariwala, Wei-Hsiang Lin, Hans A. Bechtel, George R. Rossman, and Harry A. Atwater
Nano Letters (2017) - Photovoltaics