Holger Schmidt directs the Applied Optics Group and the W.M. Keck Center for Nanoscale Optofluidics.

Electrical engineering is a very broad discipline that addresses the design and understanding of devices, circuits, and systems that use electromagnetic waves in electronic or optical signals. This increasingly involves the use of computers, but focuses on the design and analysis of electronic/optical components and the signals that connect them. In contrast, the field of computer engineering focuses on computer hardware, while computer science looks at computer software and theory.