Federico Capasso is the Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after a 27-years career at Bell Labs from postdoc to Physical Research VP. He pioneered bandgap engineering of heterostructure materials and devices, including the quantum cascade laser, metasurface based flat optics, MEMS based on the Casimir effect and measured for the first time the repulsive Casimir force. He is a member of NAS, NAE and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). His awards include the Balzan Prize for Applied Photonics, the King Faisal Prize, the APS Arthur Schawlow Prize, the AAAS Rumford Prize, the IEEE Edison Medal, OSA’s R. W. Wood Prize, the Materials Research Society Medal, and the Witherill medal of the Franklin Institute. In 2021, he received the Fredric Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize.