Kumar Appointed to NTT Basic Research Laboratories Advisory Board
Professor Prem Kumar will provide guidance on the long-term strategy for NTT’s fundamental research in materials science, quantum science, and solid-state and optical science
Northwestern Engineering’s Prem Kumar has been appointed to the advisory board of the NTT Basic Research Laboratories (BRL) in Atsugi, Japan.
Part of the NTT Science & Core Technology Laboratory Group, BRL scientists in domains including physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, mathematics, information-science, and medicine conduct fundamental research in materials science, quantum science, and solid-state and optical science.
Convening approximately once every two years to evaluate research plans and provide guidance on long-term strategy, Kumar will attend the next advisory board meeting, scheduled in January 2026.
“Advisory board members represent all areas of science, technology, and engineering,” said Kumar, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and director of the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing. “The equivalent would be our own McCormick Advisory Council, but in an industrial setting.”
Through his role on the advisory board, Kumar seeks to build bridges among his colleagues at NTT and Northwestern teams investigating fields including photonics, semiconductor devices, and low-energy communications.
Kumar’s connection to NTT began more than 40 years ago under the mentorship of Yoshihisa Yamamoto, currently the director of the NTT Physics & Informatics Laboratories and an emeritus professor at Stanford University and National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo. Back then, Kumar was working as a research scientist at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and Yamamoto, then a visiting scientist at MIT from NTT-BRL.
More recently, Kumar and Hiroki Takesue, group leader of the Quantum Optical State Control Research Group and director of the Quantum Science and Technology Laboratory at NTT-BRL, are collaborating on the editorial board of Optica, where Kumar has served as editor-in-chief since 2020.
In October, Kumar was a plenary speaker at the Quantum Internet Seminar, hosted by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology at the Nihonbashi Innovation Center in Tokyo. The event was cosponsored by NTT as part of UNESCO’s 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.