Antonio Hurtado

Antonio Hurtado is a Reader (equivalent to Associate Professor) and Turing AI Fellow at the Institute of Photonics, University of Strathclyde, UK, with over 15 years of international research experience spanning the Universities of Essex, Strathclyde, New Mexico, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He leads the Neuromorphic Photonics research group and serves as Principal Investigator for major international projects.

Hurtado earned his Doctor of Engineering in Bistable Photonic Structures for Computing and Switching from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2006. His academic journey includes prestigious appointments as a Marie Curie Fellow and Chancellor’s Fellow prior to his current role.

His research pioneers Photonics for Neuromorphic Computing and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on ultrafast artificial photonic spiking neurons, photonic spiking neural networks, and optical spike-based processing platforms. This interdisciplinary work bridges photonics, neuroscience, and computer science to develop high-speed, energy-efficient brain-inspired computing architectures. Key innovations involve VCSELs, resonant tunneling diodes, and silicon photonics for neuromorphic hardware.

Analysis of his 179+ publications reveals a dominant trend toward photonic implementations of spiking neural networks, with increasing emphasis on VCSEL-based systems, reservoir computing, and hardware-efficient neuromorphic architectures. Recent work (2024-2025) demonstrates significant advances in GHz-rate processing, multi-wavelength operation, and memory integration for real-world AI applications.

Major recognitions include:

• Two Marie Curie Fellowships from the European Commission
• Chancellor’s Fellowship from the University of Strathclyde
• Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship from UKRI

Hurtado has secured substantial funding as Principal Investigator from UK (EPSRC), US (ONRG), and EU (Horizon Europe, H2020) agencies. Current flagship projects include SPIKEPro (Horizon Europe, 2024-2028) developing spiking photonic-electronic ICs, and ProSensing (EPSRC, 2024-2026) creating low-power processing-in-sensing systems. He actively supervises PhD students and has completed supervision for three doctoral candidates.

The Neuromorphic Photonics group he founded conducts cutting-edge research on light-enabled brain-inspired computing, with strong industry partnerships and contributions to UN Sustainable Development Goals through energy-efficient computing solutions. The group maintains active collaborations across 12 countries and focuses on translating fundamental research into practical neuromorphic photonic systems.