Branislav Vlahovic is professor of physics at NCCU and director of the Computational NSF Center of Research Excellence and NASA University Research Center for Aerospace Device. He obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees (nuclear physics and material science) in Zagreb University, Croatia. He was research scientist at Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, from 1978 until 1990, when he come to Duke University to work on low energy nuclear physics. Between 1996 and 2001 he had a shared appointment with Jefferson National Laboratory (medium energy nuclear physics) and NCCU. At NCCU he established material science, semiconductor physics, and nanotechnology laboratories and strong theoretical and experimental programs in material science and nuclear physics. For his research and work with students in 2004 he was awarded Gardner award, which is the only state wide award in North Carolina given to UNC system faculty. He published more than 300 peer reviewed articles in the fields of experimental and theoretical material science, nanotechnology, optics and photonics, chemistry, cosmology, genomics, atomic, nuclear, and hypernuclear physics.

Dr. Vlahovic research interest related to lasers and photonics includes: pulsed laser deposition of nanostructures, nonlinear optics, computer simulations of nanostructures, tunneling and charge transfer between nanostructures, detectors and devices based on quantum confinement, nanophotonics, semiconductor structures, and photovoltaics.