Brian Washburn received his B.S degree in physics (summa cum laude) from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha, WI in 1994. As physics undergraduate at UW-Parkside he spent one year working at Argonne National Laboratory. Here, his research focused on experimental vortex pinning in high-temperature superconductors. From there, he moved to Emory University and then to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA to complete his Ph.D. in Physics. His graduate career began by conducting ultrafast laser spectroscopy of III-V semiconductors, which included experiments using terahertz generation and time-resolved photoluminescence. His graduate thesis then focused on measuring and simulating the nonlinear processes that occur during supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers. Also, while at Georgia Tech, Brian was a member of the Georgia Tech Ultrafast Optical Communications Consortium, which was a consortium between Georgia Tech, Bell South, Nortel Networks, and Corning Incorporated to develop a 160 Gbit/s optical time division multiplexed link. After completing his Ph.D. in the spring of 2002, Brian started a postdoctoral position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder CO studying noise properties of supercontinuum generation. This work has lead to him developing the first phase-locked all-fiber based supercontinuum source for frequency metrology. In August 2005 he joined Kansas State University, Manhattan KS, as an assistant professor in physics. At Kansas State, Dr. Washburn has demonstrated a low-loss fusion method between photonic bandgap fiber and step index fiber using a arc fusion splicer, generated of sub 30 fs pulses by using parabolic pulse compression, and has phase stabilized fiber laser that uses a carbon nanotube as a saturable absorber. His current research interests include ultrafast semiconductor spectroscopy, nonlinear fiber optics, mode-locked fiber lasers, and quantum optics.

Dr. Washburn is a member of the Optical Society of America, the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics (LEOS) Society, and the American Physical Society.