Originally from Brittany on the west coast of France, Professor Marhic moved to the US in 1970 where he gained his PhD entitled, "The ponderomotive force exerted on a plasma by an infrared laser beam" from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1974.  After completion of his PhD, he was appointed assistant professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, which would act as a base for him over the next 20 years. During this time he was appointed variously as visiting and associate professor to institutions within the US including the University of Southern California’s Physics Department’s Center for Laser Studies in 1979-80 where he pursued research in whispering-gallery waveguides for CO₂ lasers, and the Gould Research Centre in 1983. 

Professor Marhic was awarded tenure at Northwestern University in 1985 and his research over the next 13 years focussed on areas including fibre optics for holography, hollow waveguides for free-electron lasers and coherent optical processing in single-mode networks. Prior to joining IAT, Professor Marhic was consulting professor in the Optical Communication Research Laboratory at Stanford University’s Electrical Engineering Department, where his research dealt with nonlinearities in optical fibers, particularly the development of fiber optical parametric amplifiers. 

Since 1975 Professor Marhic has been consultant to a number of organisations including Motorola, Benchmark and Gould. Over the years he has been reviewer of a number of prestigious journals including Optics Express, Optics Letters, Electronics Letters and the Journal of Lightwave Technology.  He is the author or co-author of 300 journal and conference publications.

During the eighties, Professor Marhic was co-founder of the Holicon Corporation and Holographic Industries and in 1999 co-founded Cactus Systems in Palo Alto, California.  Since 1999 he has been President of the OPAL Laboratories, San Francisco, where he developed non-linear fibre devices for wideband frequency conversion and amplification, and between 2000-2002 he was Scientific Advisor for Templex Technologies in San José, California and Consultant for the Intel Corporation also based in San José.

Professor Marhic has issued eight patents including the Fibre Optics Laser Illuminator in 1977 and the Single Mode 1 x N Holographic Fibre Optic Coupler in 1990.  He is a senior member of the IEEE (LEOS) and is a member of the Optical Society of America.

Tel: +44 (0)1792 602524    Email: m.e.marhic(at)swansea.ac.uk