This podcast features Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics, and an electrical engineering research fellow at Harvard University. In June of 2016, Capasso’s lab reported fabrication of an ultrathin planar lens based on nanoscale, metasurface concepts that he has been studying for the past five years. While he is perhaps best known for his role in the invention of the quantum cascade laser at Bell Laboratories in 1994, pinning down just one seminal work is a challenge for a scientist whose career is a multidisciplinary continuum.