Kristinn Gylfason

Kristinn B. Gylfason received the title of Docent in Micro- and Nanosystems in 2015 and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from in 2010, both from KTH. He received the MSc and BSc degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Iceland in 2003 and 2001, respectively. In the spring term of 2002, he did an exchange at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. From 2003 through 2005, he was a research engineer at Lyfjathroun Biopharmaceuticals, Iceland, and in 2005 he received the Steinmaur Foundation nanotechnology graduate study scholarship. He received the Göran Gustafsson Young Researcher Price as well as the largest Young Researcher grant awarded by the Swedish Research Council to KTH in 2011. During spring 2013, Kristinn was a visiting post-doctoral scholar at the Photonics Group, Ghent University, Belgium.

Kristinn Gylfason is researching nanophotonics and how they can enhance our environmental monitoring and communication systems. The localization of hidden sources of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and methane, is becoming increasingly important due to global warming. Through the tools of nanophotonics, small and inexpensive gas sensors can be manufactured in large volumes to establish global networks of environmental monitoring sensors. Kristinn and his research team have developed miniaturized optical carbon dioxide and methane sensors that can be integrated into smartphones or flown around in drones to ensure air quality and locate emissions. As the need for data communication continues to grow, more of our communication systems are becoming optical. By employing nanophotonic methods, energy-intensive microelectronic circuits can be replaced with light circuits capable of handling large amounts of data with minimal energy consumption. Kristinn and his research group have developed such light circuits that can dramatically reduce power consumption in data centers.

Research profile

Kristinn leads the research on  photonic micro- and nanosystems at KTH MST.

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