Dr. Erkin Siddiq is the Senior Advisor to the World Uyghur Congress and the founder of Uyghur Academy. He was born in the city of Aksu in East Turkistan (called Xinjiang in China), located in the north-western part of China . After earning his BS degree in Electrical Engineering at Xinjiang University, he worked as a teacher and a research associate in China and Japan until 1988. Dr. Sidick earned his master's degree in Physics in May 1990 from California State University at Northridge, and his PhD degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis on nonlinear optics in 1995 from the University of California Davis. After engaging in research at UC Davis and Sandia National Laboratories (CA) as a post-doc for one and a half years on laser traps and nonlinear optical devices, he worked in 3 different companies in Silicon Valley of California in Research and Development as well as in managerial roles in various fields of optics, especially on passive optical components. He joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in January 2004 as a Senior Optical Engineer and is working on the integrated modeling and metrology of space telescopes for direct detention of habitable exo-planets. He has co-authored over 120 publications including journal papers, book chapters, and conference presentations, and has 3 patents.
