Hilmi Volkan Demir received his B.Sc. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Bilkent University (one of the top ranking engineering schools in Turkey) in 1998, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, CA, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Since September 2004, he has been working as a faculty member at Bilkent University (his alma mater), where he presently holds appointments as a full Professor jointly at Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department (EEE), Physics Department (PHYS), and Materials Science and Nanotechnology Graduate Program (MSN). He is also a faculty member of UNAM - National Nanotechnology Research Center (nanomaterial growth and synthesis, nanofabrication, nanocharacterization) and the Advanced Research Laboratory (device fabrication and testing). At Bilkent, he is the Principle Investigator of the Demir Research Group, and the Founding Director of the Devices and Sensors Research Lab. His current research interests include the science and technology of semiconductor lighting; nanocrystal optoelectronics; excitonics and plasmonics for high-efficiency light generation and harvesting; and wireless in vivo sensing and smart implants for future healthcare. Demir published over 200 peer-reviewed research articles in major scientific journals and delivered over 200 invited seminars, lectures and colloquia on the topics of LED lighting, colloidal nanophotonics, in vivo sensing, and nanoparticles research in industry and academia. Dr. Demir has contributed to commercialisation and licensing of several new enabling technologies as well as to establishing two successful companies and has generated >30 patent applications as a principal inventor, some of which have currently been used, owned or licensed by the industry. These scientific and entrepreneurship activities resulted in several important international and national awards including NRF Investigatorship Award, Nanyang Award for Research Excellence, ESF European Young Investigator Award, TUBITAK Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey Young Investigator TESVIK Award, and TUBA-GEBIP Distinguished Young Scientist Award. He has been selected The Outstanding Young Person in the World (TOYP Award) of Junior Chamber International (JCI) Federation of Young Leaders and Entrepreneurs Worldwide in the category of academic achievement and leadership. He is currently the SPRINGER-VERLAG Series Editor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and an OSA editor of Optics Express. He will serve as the Technical Chair (Washington DC 2015), Member-at-Large (Hawaii 2016), and General Chair (2017) of the IEEE Photonics Society’s flagship program IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC). He is a selected partner of European Union FP7 Nanophotonics for Energy Network of Excellence (N4E NoE) and an elected Associate Member of the Turkish National Academy of Sciences