Prof. Harish Bhaskaran

Professor Harish Bhaskaran FREng is a pioneer of photonic computing and interconnects for AI, and served as a UK Manufacturing Fellow for nine years. He was Professor of Applied Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford, where he established and led the Advanced Nanoscale Engineering Group and served as Associate Head of the MPLS Division. A former researcher at IBM Research, his career has spanned both industry and academia, and he is a prolific inventor — including of the photonic tensor core and the photonic non-volatile memory.

Harish is the academic founder of Salience Labs, where foundational technology developed by his Oxford research group — including a brain-inspired optical switch published in Nature in 2020 — formed the basis of the company's spin-out. He has served as Photonics Advisor since spin-out, contributing scientific leadership and strategic guidance. He has also co-founded Bodle Technologies and has collaborated with artists to create work at the intersection of engineering and culture.

Salience Labs has grown to over 50 employees, raised more than $45 million in total funding, and in 2025 closed a $30 million Series A led by ICM HPQC Fund and Applied Ventures. Its photonic switches are being deployed to reduce network latency and power consumption in AI datacentre clusters operated by hyperscalers and large enterprises globally.