Salah S. A. Obayya (PI) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electronics and communications engineering from Mansoura University, Egypt, in 1991 and 1994, respectively, and the PhD degree from Mansoura University, in 1999. From 1997 to 1999, he was with the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering, City University London, UK, to carry out the research part of his PhD under the joint supervision scheme between the City University London and Mansoura University. He joined Zewail City of Science and Technology (ZC) in 2012 where he is now Chair Professor and Founding Director of Center for Photonics and Smart Materials (CPSM). He occupied the positions of the Vice Chairman of ZC (President), and Director-General of Research Institutes at the same institution. Prior to Zewail City, he took up several academic posts at Brunel University, UK (tenured Associate Professor, 2002), University of Leeds, UK (tenured Professor, 2006) and University of South Wales, UK (tenured Chair Professor, 2008) where he was the Founding Director of Photonics and Broadband Communications (PBC) Research Center and also he was the Director of Postgraduate Programs at the same institution.

He received Doctor of Science (DSc) degree in Photonics from City University of London in Jan 2016; a degree awarded only to those who gained international distinction in their own fields. He is an Honorary Special Chair Professor of Photonics, University of Nottingham, UK, 2017, for his outstanding world-class research record. He has built an outstanding international reputation in the area of green nanophotonics with a focus on the intelligent computational modeling of modern nanophotonic devices enabling technologies for efficient generation, distribution, and utilization of sustainable energy toward low-carbon green society. He has a track record of 247 journal publications mostly in the IEEE, IET/IEE, and OSA; has authored three books, namely Computational Photonics (Wiley, 2010), Computational Liquid Crystal Photonics (Wiley, 2016), and Computational of Photonic Sensors (2018), which are adopted references for Graduate Programs in Photonics at international Universities; and 254 conference papers in international conference in photonics, many of these are invited talks, and keynote lectures, attracted external funding, from both industry and Research Councils, in the region of $4M, and supervised to successful completion 35 Ph.D. students, over 70 M.Sc./M.Res./M.Phil. Students, and 15 postdoctoral research fellows.

As remarkable recognition of his research achievements, he was the recipient of many national and international awards and recognitions such as Order of Science and Arts of the first class, the most prestigious order awarded by President of Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in the National Science Day, Egypt, 2019, Best Scientific Book, COMSTECH-Awards-2017, 2019, State Appreciation Award, Egypt, 2019, and UNESCO Chair, Paris, France, 2019. Recently, Dr. Obayya was elected as the first Arab and African Fellow of Optical Society of America (OSA) in Sep. 2019. He was elected Fellow of African Academy of Science (AAS), 2018, and Chairman of Nanotechnology Group of AAS.