Dr. Michael Becker is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and holds the William H. Hartwig Fellowship in Electrical Engineering.

He received his B.E.S. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1970 and 1974 respectively. Dr. Becker was named the William H. Hartwig fellow in Electrical Engineering in 1996. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and has received the Faculty Excellence Award from the Halliburton Education Foundation. Dr. Becker has supervised the successful completion of 15 Ph.D. and 24 M.S. degrees. He is the author of over 50 papers and 37 conference proceedings. He holds one patent and has co-authored three books. His teaching interests are in optics, optical information processing, and capstone design project laboratory courses, including multidisciplinary projects courses.

The major theme of Dr. Becker's research is the interaction of light with matter. His research activity on nanoparticles and nanomaterials is aimed at producing high-performance nanoparticles and nanomaterials of gold, silver, silicon, CdSe, GaN, PZT, Terfenol, and related materials for applications that utilize the unique properties of nanoparticles. The applications being investigated are for electronic interconnects, linear and nonlinear photonic materials and devices, and micro-mechanical actuators, all of which incorporate nanomaterials. Other work is directed towards optical signal processing using various types of nonlinear and modulation optical devices.