Mikhail Belkin received his B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1998 and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. From 2004 to 2008 he worked in Federico Capasso's group in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, first as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a research associate. He joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 2008.
Mikhail Belkin's current research interests include the development of novel quantum cascade lasers, giant optical nonlinearities in semiconductor nanostructures, mid-infrared and THz photonic and plasmonic systems for chemical sensing, and metamaterials in mid-infrared. Several of the recent publications he co-authored have received considerable media coverage, in particular his work on THz semiconductor laser sources based on intra-cavity difference-frequency generation (see MIT Technology Review, Laser Focus World, Science Daily, and others), a millimeter-sized mid-infrared spectrometer for chem/bio sensing (see MIT Technology Review, Photonics Spectra, Science Daily, and others), and THz quantum cascade lasers with record operating temperatures (see Optics.ORG).