Robert R. Alfano is Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering at The City College of the City University of New York, USA. He received his PhD in physics from New York University and worked at GTE Research Labs (Verizon). He has pioneered many applications of photonics technology to the study of biological, biomedical and condensed matter systems using optical spectroscopy and optical imaging. He discovered and used the supercontinuum and novel tunable Cr doped solid state lasers.

Professor Alfano has made seminal contributions to biomedical optics field in diverse use of optical spectroscopy and imaging. He introduced ballistic light for turbid media and Golden Window for deep optical imaging in tissues. He uses Label Free Fluorescence, Raman and Resonance Raman, Stoke Shift, Second Harmonic Generation and 2-Photon Excitation for cancer detection. He introduced spatial Fourier frequencies as for histology and discovered that Tryptophan as key biomarker for aggressive cancer in cells.

For his work, he received the 2008 Charles Hard Townes Medal and the 2016 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award. He was elected a Fellow in 1989.