Aaron Hawkins

In 2019 he received the IEEE Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award, jointly with his collaborator, Holger Schmidt of UC Santa Cruz, "for the invention and development of optofluidic waveguides and their applications, in particular commercialization for biomedical diagnostics."

Hawkins was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society in 2015 for "developments in optical communications photodiodes and receivers, specifically wafer-fused photodiodes, and for contributions in the field of optofluidics, especially hollow-core waveguide-based analysis platforms." He was named as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2016 "for contributions to optofluidics."

With Stephen Schultz, Hawkins is the author of the textbook Practically Magic: A Guide to Electrical and Computer Engineering (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2013).

Hawkins was born in Rehoboth, New Mexico. He received his B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology in applied physics in 1994, and went on to the University of California, Santa Barbara for his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering, which he completed in 1998. His dissertation, Silicon-Indium-Gallium-Arsenide Avalanche Photodetectors, was supervised by John E. Bowers. He held several jobs in industry before moving to Brigham Young in 2002.

Aaron Roe Hawkins (born February 26, 1970) is an American engineer known for his work in optofluidics. He is a professor and chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Brigham Young University.