Naomi J. Halas is a University Professor and the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University.

She is a distinguished researcher known for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. Halas is best known for showing that the nanoscale internal and external morphologies of noble metal nanoparticles control their optical properties.  She was the first person to introduce structural control into the colloidal synthesis of coinage metal nanoparticles to control their optical resonances, which are due to their collective electron oscillations, known as plasmons. Her work has merged chemical nanofabrication with optics, giving rise to the field of Plasmonics.  She pursues fundamental studies of coupled plasmonic systems as well as applications of plasmonics in biomedicine, optoelectronics, chemical sensing, photocatalysis, sustainability, and solar water treatment. She is the author of more than 400 refereed publications, has more than twenty-five issued patents, has presented more than 600 invited talks, and has been a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science since 2014.  She has over 90,000 citations and H=148 on Web of Science; over 125,000 citations and H=169 on Google Scholar. She is co-founder of Nanospectra Biosciences, a company offering ultralocalized photothermal ablation therapies for cancer based on her nanoparticles.  She is co-founder of Syzygy Plasmonics, a company with more than 100 employees currently deploying light-based chemical reactors for Hydrogen production based on photocatalyst particles originally invented in her laboratory. She has received three honorary doctorate degrees.  She has been awarded the Frank Isakson Prize (with Peter Nordlander), the Julius Lilienfeld Prize, and the Mildred Dresselhaus Prize of the American Physical Society, the R. W. Wood Prize (with Peter Nordlander) and the C. E. K. Mees Medal of Optica, the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid Chemistry, the Spiers Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the ENI Energy Transition Award (with Peter Nordlander) by the President of Italy. She is a Hans Fischer Fellow of the Technische Universität München-Institute of Advanced Study, and has also received the Geoffrey Frew Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Sciences.  She is a member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).