Dennis Prather

Engineering Alumni Professor

About Dennis Prather

Professor Dennis Prather began his professional career by joining the US Navy in 1982, as an E-1, where he served for more than 38 years and recently retired as a CAPT (O-6) Engineering Duty Officer. After his initial tour of active duty, he attended the University of Maryland and received the BSEE, MSEE, and PhD degrees in 1989, 1993, and 1997, respectively. During his graduate study, he worked as a senior research engineer for the Army Research Laboratory, where he performed research on both optical devices and architectures for information processing. In 1997 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he is currently the College of Engineering Alumni Distinguished Professor. His research focuses on both the theoretical and experimental aspects of RF-photonic devices and their integration into operational systems for imaging, communications and Radar. To achieve this, his lab designs and develops fabrication/integration processes necessary for the demonstration of state-of-the-art RF-photonic devices such as: ultra-high bandwidth modulators, silicon photonic RF sources, photonic crystal chip-scale routers, meta-material antennas, and integrated RF-Photonic phased array antennas.

Professor Prather is currently an Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering, he is a Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the Society of Photo-Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has authored or co-authored over 650 scientific papers, holds over 40 patents, and has written 16 books/book-chapters.

Current Projects

• Silicon Photonics
• Ultra-wideband Conformal Antennas
• Passive Millimeter-wave Imaging
• High-Frequency Optical Modulators and RF Photonic Integration