Rayko Stantchev was born in Bulgaria, but he went to school in the United Kingdom and later to the university of Exeter where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Maths and Physics combined honours in 2013.

Immediately after, without a Master’s degree, in Exeter he started a PhD in experimental physics working with a THz spectrometer and spatial light modulators. His PhD focused on the experimental implementation of non-invasive THz imaging using single-element detectors, with the addition of adaptive undersampling techniques.

Upon completion of his thesis, in 2017, he moved to Hong Kong for a postdoc with the THz group of E. Pickwell-MacPherson in CUHK, where he focused on implementing a single-pixel THz camera for in-vivo THz imaging. In Sep/2022 he then moved to Taiwan to be an assistant professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University, whilst holding an honorary research fellow position at the University of Warwick.