Akhlesh Lakhtakia was born in Lucknow, India on July 1, 1957. He obtained a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics Engineering from the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India in 1979; Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City in 1981 and 1983, respectively; and a Doctor of Science degree in Electronics Engineering from the Banaras Hindu University in 2006. In 1983, he joined the faculty of the Pennsylvania State University, where he was elevated to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics in January 2004. In 2006, he became the Charles Godfrey Binder (Endowed) Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. In 2018, he received the highest rank at Penn State: Evan Pugh University Professor.
Dr. Lakhtakia has published more than 850 journal articles; has contributed 33 chapters to research books and encyclopedias; has edited, co-edited, authored or co-authored 21 books and 26 conference proceedings; has authored or co-authored 369 conference papers; has reviewed for 173 journals; serves on the editorial boards of five electromagnetics journals; and was the first Editor- in-Chief (2006–2013) of the SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics. He serves as an international lecturer for the International Commission for Optics, SPIE, and the Optical Society of America; was twice a Visiting Professor of Physics at Universidad de Buenos Aires, a Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of Otago, a Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, a Visiting Fellow in Mathematics at the University of Glasgow, and Honorary International Professor National Taipei University of Technology; and headed the IEEE EMC Technical Committee on Nonsinusoidal Fields from 1992 to 1994.
Dr. Lakhtakia was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1992), SPIE (1996), the UK Institute of Physics (1996), the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (2009), the American Physical Society (2012), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2016), the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016), and the Royal Society of Arts (2017). He was named to the inaugural class of Outstanding Reviewers by the Optical Society of America in 2012. He also served as the 1995 Scottish Amicable Visiting Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He received the PSES Outstanding Research Award in 1996, the PSES Premier Research Award in 2008, and the PSES Outstanding Advising Award in 2005. For his research on sculptured thin films and complex-medium electromagnetics, he received the Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering in 2005 from the Pennsylvania State University, and was the sole recipient of the 2010 SPIE Technical Achievement Award. Nanotech Briefs recognized him in 2006 with a Nano 50 Award for Innovation. Sigma Xi bestowed on him the Walston Chubb Award for Innovation in 2016. The University of Utah made him a Distinguished Alumnus in 2007 and the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in 2014.
His current research interests lie in the electromagnetics of complex materials including chiral and bianisotropic materials, sculptured thin films, chiral nanotubes, nanoengineered metamaterials, surface multiplasmonics, engineered biomimicry, bone nano-refacing, and forensic science. He has more than 15500 citations on the Web of Knowledge and his Hirsch index is 51. According to Google Scholar, the number of citations exceeds 25100 and his Hirsch index is 67. His research accomplishments have been discussed on CNN and in a NOVA movie. His recent research has been covered on several scientific media outlets.