Tobias Kippenberg earned his B.A. from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany, M.S. and Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, USA, and Habilitation from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. He is currently Full Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at EPFL.

In 2007, Kippenberg and his team discovered the ability of optical microresonators to generate optical frequency combs via parametric interactions. This discovery showed that as an alternative to the use of mode-locked lasers, a CW laser can be converted into a broadband frequency comb via nonlinear wave mixing, overcoming passive cavity dispersion. Kippenberg has led the field in novel microfabrication techniques, both in crystalline microresonators and through his introduction and perfection of the photonic damascence process in the silicon nitride platform.

He has received the Helmholtz Prize for Metrology, Fresnel Prize of the European Physical Society, European Frequency and Time Forum (EFTF) Young Scientist Award, Swiss National Latsis Award, Klung Wilhelmy Wissenshcafts Preis and the ZEISS Research Award. He is a Fellow of OSA and the American Physical Society. In 2021, he received OSA's R.W. Wood Prize "for pioneering contributions to the realization of chip-scale optical frequency combs."