Matthew Pelton is professor and chair of the Physics Department of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He received a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford. He is an experimental physicist working in condensed matter, quantum optics, plasmonics, quantum dots and color centers. The Pelton lab uses optical techniques to experimentally probe the dynamical processes that occur when light interacts with materials on the nanometer scale to enable future technologies in classical and quantum information processing, solar energy conversion, and sensing.