Distinguished Professor Arnan Mitchell is an expert in integrated photonics who works with academics and industry to create technology solutions with real world impact.
Prof Mitchell has built RMIT’s capability in photonics (the science of using and manipulating light) over his 20-year career through national and international collaboration.
His research focuses on multi-disciplinary microtechnology – the technology that enables an entire computer with billions of functional electronic components that come together on a chip the size of your fingernail. However, rather than only creating circuits that can control electronic signals, Prof Mitchell uses microtechnology to create circuits which can also control fluids, vibrations and even light.
These multi-disciplinary microchips can be used for a vast array of applications including detecting diseases in blood, measuring contaminants in the ocean, monitoring the structural integrity of bridges, guiding the trajectory of spacecraft and submarines and transmitting and processing vast quantities of digital information.