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Michal Lipson

Michal Lipson is an Israeli-born physicist known for her work on silicon photonics and a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University.

born 1970Silicon photonics researchSlot waveguidesOptical parametric gain in siliconCo-founding Voyant Photonics

Occupation: physicist, university teacher
Education: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Michal Lipson was born in 1970 in Haifa

Michal Lipson was born in Haifa in 1970. Her father, Reuven Ofer, was a faculty member in physics. In 1978 her family moved to Brazil.

She studied for 2 years at the physics institute of the University of São Paulo, then moved to the Technion. There she earned a BSc in physics in 1992, an MSc in 1994 and a PhD in 1998. She then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral researcher with Lionel Kimerling at MIT.

In 2001 she joined Cornell University, where she taught engineering until 2014. She then moved to Columbia University, where she holds the Eugene Higgins chair in electrical engineering. Her research covers silicon photonic devices such as ring resonators, modulators and slot waveguides, and she was the first to show optical parametric gain in silicon.

She co-founded the companies PicoLuz in 2009, Voyant Photonics in 2019 and Xscape Photonics in 2022. She served as president of Optica in 2023. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2025.