Dr. Murat Yessenov

Murat Yessenov is a postdoctoral fellow in the Capasso Group at Harvard University, starting in February 2025. He is also a Research Associate affiliated with Prof. Abouraddy’s group at the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL), University of Central Florida. Murat leads research on spatiotemporal metasurfaces—thin optical devices that sculpt the properties of light in space and time simultaneously.

He earned a B.Sc. in Physics from Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, during which he completed summer internships at the Crete Center for Quantum Complexity and Nanotechnology (Heraklion, Greece) and the Tien Shan Mountain Cosmic Ray Station (Almaty, Kazakhstan), gaining exposure to quantum computing and high-energy physics. Murat obtained his Ph.D. in Optics from CREOL in Prof. Abouraddy’s group, where he pioneered research on space-time wave packets—a novel class of spatiotemporally structured optical fields. During his Ph.D., he developed the first optical setup to generate 3D space-time wave packets, demonstrating full control over light propagation in free space.

Murat’s Ph.D. work received multiple recognitions, including the Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Award from OPTICA (2020), the Laser Technology, Engineering, and Applications Scholarship from SPIE (2022), the Boris P. Stoicheff Memorial Scholarship from OPTICA (2022), and the CREOL Student of the Year Award (2022). He has co-authored over 40 journal articles and delivered more than 10 contributed talks.