Prachi Thureja

Prachi Thureja is a nanophotonics engineer designing reconfigurable optical metasurfaces that bend, split, and redirect beams of light with sub-wavelength precision. During her PhD at Caltech, she co-led the development of the first electrically tunable “space-time” metasurface at optical frequencies—an ultra-compact device capable of real-time frequency generation and directional beam steering, all on a chip the size of a grain of rice.

 

Her work represents a leap forward for wireless optical communications, enabling faster, more secure, and more efficient data transmission in both terrestrial and deep-space applications. Now at CUNY ASRC as an SNSF Postdoctoral Fellow, she is building on this foundation to explore next-generation metasurface platforms for quantum photonics, LiDAR, and beyond. With roots in both Switzerland and India, and technical fluency across physics, materials, and systems design, Prachi is using her varied experiences to redefine how we manipulate light—and what it can do.