His research in Bilkent involves nanophotonics, nanometamaterials, nanoelectronics, nanoplasmonics, nanodevices, photonic crystals, GaN/AlGaN MOCVD growth, fabrication and characterization of GaN based devices, and high speed optoelectronics. He is the 1997 recipient of the Adolph Lomb Medal of Optical Society of America and 2005 European Union Descartes Science award. He is also the recipient of 1995 Parlar Foundation young scientist, 1996 Tugac foundation technology development, 1997 TUBITAK young scientist, 1998 Sedat Simavi Foundation Science, 2006 TUBITAK Science awards. He is working as a topical editor of Optics Letters journal since 2002. He became the editor of Photonics and Nanostructures journal in 2006. He has published 169 articles in SCI journals, and 202 international conference proceedings. His publications have received more than 3000 SCI citations. He holds 2 patents in the area of photonic crystals. He has given 63 invited talks in international conferences. His recent review article on plasmonics appeared as an invited review article in Jan. 12th 2006 issue of Science Magazine . He is currently working as a principal investigator, and executive committee member in 5 EU-FP projects. These include a STREP project EU-DALHM (Development and Analysis of Left Handed Materials), NoE-PHOREMOST (Nanophotonics to realize Molecular-Scale Technologies), and NoE-METAMORPHOSE (MetaMaterials ORganized for radio, millimeter wave, and PHOtonic Superlattice Engineering), EU-ECONAM (Electromagntetic Characterization of Nanostructured Materials), and EU-PHOME (PHOtonic Metamaterials). Besides these EU projects, he is the principal investigator of 10 national projects supported by various funding agencies. He has worked with various high-tech companies in USA, Europe and Turkey. He is currently acting as the national delegate for Turkey in the program committee of EU-NMP (nanotechnologies, manufacturing and processes) which is preparing the workprogramme and the project calls for EU-FP7. He is also working as the national representative for the nanotechnology programs in EU-COST projects. Prof. Dr. Ozbay is married and the father of Imre, Esen, Sedef, Firat, and Umut.