Wolfgang Fink, Ph.D.
Edward & Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair, University of Arizona
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Fink is a German-American theoretical physicist and the inaugural Edward & Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair (em.) at the University of Arizona, having held joint appointments in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Systems & Industrial Engineering, Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, and Ophthalmology & Vision Science. He was a Senior Researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2001-2009), a Visiting Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology (2001-2016), and held concurrent appointments as Visiting Research Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California (2005-2014). Dr. Fink is the founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech and at the University of Arizona. He obtained a B.S. and M.S. degree in Physics and Physical Chemistry from the University of Göttingen in 1990 and 1993, and a Ph.D. "summa cum laude" in Theoretical Physics from the University of Tübingen in 1997. Dr. Fink is a LFNAI, FARVO, LFSPIE, FPHMS, FAIMBE, and a SM IEEE, as well as the 2015 daVinci Fellow and 2017 ACABI Fellow of the University of Arizona. He is the VP of the PHM Society, and holds a Commercial Pilots License for Rotorcraft. Pursuing a trans-disciplinary systems engineering approach in "smart service systems" in general, Dr. Fink has focused his research and technology development efforts on biomedical engineering for healthcare (especially ophthalmology and vision care), human-computer interfaces (artificial vision implants), smart platforms for mobile- and tele-health, autonomous systems (robotic space exploration), and computer-optimized design. Dr. Fink has over 270 publications (incl. journal, book, and conference contributions), 6 NASA Patent Awards, as well as 32 U.S. and foreign patents awarded to date in the areas of autonomous systems, biomedical devices, neural stimulation, MEMS fabrication, data fusion and analysis, and multi-dimensional optimization. Among numerous awards Dr. Fink was named recipient of the NASA Space Flight Awareness (SFA) Launch Honoree Award in 2002, co-recipient of the 2009 R&D Magazine’s R&D 100 and R&D 100 Editors’ Choice Award both for the DOE-funded Artificial Retina Project, co-recipient of the 2009 NASA Board Award for his pioneering work on a disruptive autonomous space exploration paradigm, co-winner of the $200,000 DOE/NREL-sponsored E-ROBOT Prize in 2021, and recipient of the 2023 SPIE Meinel Technology Achievement Award.
