After 15 years at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in New York, Yurii Vlasov has accepted a tenured position spanning across three U of I departments: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Bioengineering. Vlasov is one of the pioneers of silicon nanophotonics. He is highly regarded for his work at IBM, developing technology that greatly reduces the energy and cost required to transmit large amounts of data between chips.