John Bowers is a world-leading researcher in the areas of silicon photonics, optoelectronics, energy efficiency and the development of novel low power optoelectronic devices for the next generation of optical networks. His research interests include silicon photonics and integrated circuits, fiber optic networks, thermoelectrics, high efficiency solar cells, and optical switching. Optical switches have the potential to reduce the energy required to switch data by factor of 10,000. Silicon photonics have the potential to reduce the energy require to transmit data on and off chips by a factor of ten or more. A recent collaboration with Intel led to the development of hybrid silicon lasers, which led to a prototype 50 Gbps high-speed optical data link, which is integrated onto silicon.