AIM PHOTONICS SUMMER ACADEMY INSTRUCTORS
This year’s AIM Photonics Summer Academy instructors feature top academics and researchers from some of the country’s leading universities and photonics institutes leading a series of short courses in process and design flows, process variation and design for manufacturing, active and passive devices, fabless PICS, optical testing and PIC packaging, as well as a broad range of integrated photonic applications, such as datacom, sensing, wireless, AR imaging and quantum computing.
Duane Boning's research focuses on understanding and modeling variation in IC, photonic, and MEMS processes, devices, and circuits. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT, where he is currently Professor of EECS, and where he serves as Co-Director of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, the MIT Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations (MIMO) effort, and as Associate Director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL).
Instructor: Process Variation and Design for Manufacturing short course
Thomas Brown is professor and director of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on polarized light in free space optics and waveguides, stress engineered optical elements, and the discovery of new metrology methods for photonic integrated circuits.
Instructor: PIC Optical Testing, PIC Packaging short courses
Jaime Cardenas is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester working on integrated and nanoscale photonics. He earned his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Optical Science and Engineering, investigating single air interface bends and waveguide microcantilevers. After two years as a process engineer, he worked at the Cornell Nanophotonics Group until 2016, before joining the Institute of Optics.
Instructor: PIC Optical Testing short course
Dirk Englund earned his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Stanford University in 2008. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he joined Columbia University as Assistant Professor of E.E. and of Applied Physics. He joined the MIT EECS faculty in 2013. Recent recognitions include the 2011 PECASE, the 2011 Sloan Fellowship in Physics, the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2017 ACS Photonics Young Investigator Award, and the OSA's 2017 Adolph Lomb Medal, a Bose Research Fellowship in 2018, and a 2020 Humboldt Research Fellowship.
Instructor: Quantum & Neuromorphic Computing short course
Ryan Hammerly a research scientist at NTT PHI Labs and a visitor at MIT with Prof. Dirk Englund. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2016, for work with Prof. Hideo Mabuchi on quantum control, nanophotonics, and nonlinear optics. In 2017 he was at the National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo), working with Prof. Yoshihisa Yamamoto on quantum annealing and optical computing concepts.
Instructor: Quantum & Neuromorphic Computing short course
Luis Gonzalez has previously conducted research in THz communications and high-speed wireless links in data centers, at University College London. He is presently at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where as a Marie Curie Fellow, he has worked on the design and implementation of photonic integrated chips for broadband coherent sub-THz communication systems.
Instructor: RF Wireless short course
Juejun Hu is the Merton C. Flemings Associate Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at MIT. His research interest is in optics and photonics for sensing, imaging, communications, and photovoltaics applications.
Instructor: PIC Passive Devices short course
Lionel Kimerling is the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and the founding Director of the MIT Microphotonics Center, where he conducts an active research program in the design and processing of semiconductor materials and devices. He is the Strategic Advisory Board Executive for Education and Workforce Development at AIM Photonics, and also serves as Executive of the AIM Photonics Summer Academy.
Instructor: Datacom short course, Moderator: Datacom PICs
Jifeng Liu is an Associate Professor at Dartmouth College. His major research field includes integrated Si photonics for ultralow energy photonic datalinks, as well as nanomaterials and nanostructures for solar thermal and solar photovoltaics.
Instructor: PIC Active Devices short course
Alex Meng is a professor at Columbia University and Technical Director of the JUMP 2.0 Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity. His research focuses on photonic devices and systems, spanning foundational technologies and their integration into next-generation computing and communication platforms.
Instructor: Integrated Photonics for AI and Data Centers short course
Ben Miller is the Dean’s Professor of Dermatology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Biomedical Engineering, and Optics at the University of Rochester. Miller is a founder of Adarza BioSystems, Inc., and the Academic Lead for Integrated Photonic Sensors in AIM Photonics.
Instructor: Sensing short course
Jelena Notaros is the Robert J. Shillman Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at MIT. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in 2020. Her research interests are in integrated silicon photonics devices, systems, and applications. Jelena was one of three Top DARPA Risers, a 2018 DARPA D60 Plenary Speaker, a 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Listee, a 2021 MIT Robert J. Shillman Career Development Chair recipient, a 2020 MIT RLE Early Career Development Award recipient, a 2015 MIT Grier Presidential Fellow, a 2015-2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a 2019 OSA CLEO Chair's Pick Award recipient, among other honors.
Instructor: Imaging short course, Moderator: 3D Imaging PICs
Stefan Preble is a Professor in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is an expert in silicon photonic devices and circuits and is working to implement the technology in high performance computing, communication and sensing systems.
Instructor: Fabless PICs: Silicon Photonics Design Flow
Sajan Saini is the Education Director at AIM Photonics Academy, MIT. He has been a lecturer at Princeton University in writing and science communications, and was formerly a member of the physics faculty at Queens College of CUNY. His photonics research interests include waveguide optical amplifiers, nanostructured materials, and photonic crystal devices.
Moderator: RF PICs
Samuel Serna is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Photonics and Optical Engineering at Bridgewater State University, where he leads research in integrated photonics with applications in packaging, sensing, and nonlinear optics; he is also a visiting professor at MIT. He is an OPTICA Member and has served on the SPIE Editorial Board.
Moderator: Sensor PICs
Chris Striemer is the Director of Test, Assembly and Packaging Operations for AIM Photonics at the Test, Assembly and Packaging facility in Rochester, NY where he coordinates projects with members and customers to most efficiently leverage the institute’s advanced packaging, metrology, and testing capabilities for their prototype designs in order to help drive them toward commercial success. Previously, he founded and led product development at two silicon technology companies in specializing in optical biosensing and microfluidics. Chris has published numerous papers along with collaborators across the industry in fields ranging from solar cell optical coatings to ultrathin membranes to label-free biomolecular detection. He earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Buffalo and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Rochester.
Instructor: AIM Photonics Test, Assembly and Packaging short course