Cornell associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Michal Lipson is a pioneer in the development of photonic circuits, in which beams of light flitting through tiny waveguides on a silicon chip replace electric currents. The MacArthur Foundation cites her as one of the first to work with such circuits on a silicon base, where they can be manufactured with the same technologies used to make electronic microchips. She demonstrated methods to guide, filter, bend and split light on silicon chips at much smaller dimensions than attained by previous researchers, offering the promise of photonic circuits as small as current electronic chips.