Henry C Kapteyn has been a Professor at the Department of Physics and a Fellow of JILA, at the University of Colorado since 1999. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at the University of Michigan, and an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Physics at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, in the field of x-ray and short-wavelength laser physics.

Kapteyn has received a number of awards including the National Science Foundation Young Investigator award in 1992, OSA's Adolph Lomb Medal in 1993, and as co-recipient with Prof. Margaret Murnane of the 2009 Ahmed Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science and Technology of the American Chemical Society.

Prof. Kapteyn is a Fellow of OSA, APS, AAAS, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.