The UCSB Quantum Foundry and the UCSB Photonics Society hosted the 2021 Quantum Industry Showcase on April 22 and 23. You can watch the Keynote address and the fireside chat below.  You can also find more information and presentations from the event at ​https://qis.quantumfoundry.ucsb.edu/. 

Like these videos? Watch the full QIS 2021 playlist at 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xulQc4G_R9w&list=PLtIKDPzlP_wMvxVLMWlnP-lP6kb7Lr29l

Between October 29 and November 10, the Photonics Society at UCSB held its third annual Women in Photonics event, a week of events promoting Women in Engineering and Science! This year, we held a total of five events for the UCSB, Goleta, and Santa Barbara communities, and hosted an international visitor. We sent local scientists to give talks at local K-12 schools, hosted a lecture given by Dr. Caroline Lai from Rockley Photonics, and hosted two Nanofab tours led by the women who work there.

​​We organized a tour of the UCSB nanofabrication facility on Saturday November 3rd from 1 - 3 pm led by female UCSB graduate students and local industry professionals for November 3.

Tours were led by:
Paula Heu of Innovative III-V Solutions
Cheyenne Lynsky from UCSB Solid-State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center
Victoria Rosborough from the research group of Prof. Jonathan Klamkin

Tour leaders showed attendees how to gown up in a bunny suit before walking them through the facility. Tours covered the various tools and techniques used in a cleanroom, as well as the many types of devices that are fabricated in the UCSB cleanroom.

In collaboration with women scientists and engineers from Freedom Photonics--a local photonics company--we organized an event at Freedom Photonics’ facility on October 30 from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. This event included a tour of the nanofabrication facility, a short lecture on photonic applications, the career paths of the Freedom Photonics scientists and engineers, and several hands-on activities including a demonstration of a handheld infrared camera, a DVD spectrometer activity, and the principles of photolithography using sidewalk chalk and stencils.

Above: Aligned stencil patterns from Freedom Photonics’ photolithography activity.

On Friday, November 2 and Friday, November 9, the Photonics Society organized talks at local middle schools by women graduate students in photonics-related fields at UCSB. In these talks, the graduate students discussed their work, their interest in science, and their educational paths through college and graduate school.
 
Dr. Caroline Lai from Rockley Photonics in Pasadena came to speak to photonics graduate students on Thursday, November 8. She spoke about Rockley Photonics’ history and gave a technical overview of the range of technologies on which the company works. She concluded by touching on her career thus far and the importance of having female mentors. 

Rockley Photonics' Vision of In-Package Optics for the Future of Datacenter Networking
Abstract: Rockley Photonics is a silicon photonics company based in Pasadena, CA, that is a fabless supplier of silicon photonics chipsets, IP, and custom designs for high-volume optics applications. One of our goals is to enable in-package optics to create an optical switching solution for datacenter network applications. In this seminar, I will give an overview of Rockley Photonics, outlining our core technology platform and key strengths.

Above: Dr. Caroline Lai from Rockley Photonics speaks at UCSB.

On Saturday November 10, female members of the Photonics Society participated in the annual I HEART STEM  conference. The conference was jointly organized by the UCSB Women’s Center and Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) student organization and is intended to encourage high-school-aged young women to pursue STEM fields when they enter college through hands-on STEM workshops and a keynote address about the difficulties they may face as a woman in STEM. All attendees and workshop facilitators were women. The Photonics Society led a hands-on workshop where attendees explored different optical phenomena such as polarization and color perception.

Above: Photonics Society Secretary Victoria Rosborough leads participants in an activity at I HEART STEM

Finally, this year, the Photonics Society hosted an international visitor for Women in Photonics Week. Miki Igarashi is a general science communicator in Japan. In addition to hosting her own YouTube science channel and running science education outreach events for children, she is a graduate student at the University of Tokyo studying science communication with a focus on women in STEM. We invited her to observe I HEART STEM workshops and talks. In addition, some members of the Photonics Society visited MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, in downtown Santa Barbara with her as well as to find inspiration through the exhibits and demonstrations for our own photonics-related educational outreach activities. She wrote a blog about her experience with I HEART STEM and MOXI on her website. Finally, we gave her our color-mixing activity (available through the FUSE website) with instructions that we had translated into Japanese with the help of a UCSB Japanese-American student. We plan to send her our other educational outreach kits with translated instructions later in the academic year. 

Above: From left to right, a student volunteer, Miki Igarashi, and Photonics Society President Takako Hirokawa after I HEART STEM 2018.

When: Week of Monday October 23rd – Saturday Oct. 28th

PhoSoc @ UCSB is organized a week of events promoting Women in Engineering and Science.  

​We sent local scientists to give talks at schools, took light-based science activities to Girls Inc., and hosted two company tours led by the women who work there.

The following events occurred:

Contact [email protected] with questions.

I HEART ❤️ STEM
Sat. Oct. 28th, 9:30am – 3:00pm
Location: UCSB Student Resource Building, Room 1120 (map)
Women in Grades 9 – 12

Organized by UCSB's Women In Science & Engineering (WISE) group, I ❤️ STEM is a one-day conference for women in 9-12th grades. UCSB scientists & graduate students held hands-on workshops on numerous scientific disciplines, including photonics, the science of light.

Victoria Rosborough & Takako Hirokawa of the Photonics Society @ UCSB hosted a light-science workshop at the conference!

Girls Inc. Goleta
The Girls Inc. science activity is being held at the Teen Center at Girls Inc. Goleta, for girls who are already part of this group.
​This year, women scientists hosted our new hands-on science activity "Color Mixing", which teaches students about how we see color, and how we can use only three ink colors to reproduce all the colors of the rainbow.

Join us for our Summer BBQ!

Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 
Location: UCSB, Engineering Science Building, Rooms ESB1001, ESB 2001, ESB 2003
​

Join us for our spring event the 2017 Light Science Workshop for a day of talks and presentations about the cutting edge in photonics research and career opportunities in this blossoming industry. The event will feature a keynote speaker, technical and non-technical presentations, Q&A panels, a job fair and a poster session!

The presentations will have two tracks: Technical and non-technical. The Technical Track will feature lectures on cutting-edge research in the area from varying fields that use and manipulate light. The Non-Technical Track will focus on careers in the industry and professional development. Keep checking back on this page for the most up-to-date information!

The event is free for those affiliated with a university or college. Otherwise, general admission to the event is $20.

​If you are interested in sponsoring the event or holding a booth at the career fair, please contact us

Please see our Program of Events for more information!

Technical and Non-technical talks will include presentations from speakers representing research groups, photonics companies, and partnerships and collaborations at UCSB and around Santa Barbara. A sample of our scheduled speakers will include the following:
​
Optoelectronics Research Group of John Bowers
Dan Blumenthal, Optical Communication and Photonic Integration Group
Phil Lubin, UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group
AIM Photonics
​Freedom Photonics
Unite To Light
Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships (CSEP) at CNSi
UCSB Nanofabrication Facility

This event is made possible with the generous support of:
​

Abstract: Today’s fiber-optic communication networks span the globe, delivering broadband information across all market segments and connecting massive datacenters, businesses, and individual user’s homes. As such, optical networks must operate reliably and efficiently when transporting the massive information capacity of the Internet, allowing networks to adapt to growing and changing demand flows and occasional interruptions. Wavelength-selective switches (WSS) have been instrumental in fulfilling this role, enabling all-optical spectral routing of individual wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) communication channels at network nodes.

The recent introduction of space-division multiplexing (SDM) to the optical communication domain with new fiber types, in order to economically support the exponentially growing capacity, necessitates complementary components for implementing SDM-WDM optical networks. SDM is typically realized with either multi-core or few-mode fibers and great capacity achievements have been demonstrated to-date in each fiber solution. Wavelength-selective switching functionality for these two fiber types has recently been introduced. A joint- switching WSS concept has been realized for multi-core fibers, enabling information to be encoded and routed on the SDM-WDM optical network as a spatial super-channel (single wavelength channel spanning multiple cores). This spatial super-channel routing concept with joint-switching WSS also extends to few- mode fibers. Hence a single WSS can then be used in analogous fashion to the single-mode fiber networks, thereby heralding the cost-savings benefits of SDM. A WSS with direct few-mode fiber interfaces has been demonstrated with the few-mode beams routed in free-space just as the single mode beam does in a conventional WSS. A study on the pass band filtering effect and mode mixing due to the spectral switching of dispersed components revealed the spatial-spectral interplay in the mode-dependent loss attributes of the few- mode fiber WSS. Such advanced WSS prototypes will serve the next generation transport networks when SDM is fully adopted by carriers. 

Bio: Prof. Dan Marom joined the faculty of the Applied Physics Department in the fall of 2005, where he is pursuing his research interests in creating photonic devices for switching and manipulating optical signals. Dan earned the B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1989, and the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1995, both from Tel-Aviv University's School of Engineering. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering by the University of California, San Diego , in 2000. From 2000 until 2005, Dan was employed as a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories , then part of Lucent Technologies. 

Abstract: Microscopy  is  usually  performed  in  a  laboratory  on  carefully  prepared,  very  thin  samples  and  achieves resolutions  of  better  than  a  micrometer.  Medical imaging, by contrast, is usually performed on sizeable portions of the living human body, and resolutions are rarely better than 1 millimeter. Over the last decade, there has been great progress in applying optical microscopy techniques to the human body in a medical setting.  This push has been led by optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is now in mainstream use in ophthalmology and is gaining acceptance in cardiology. In this talk, 3D microscopic imaging deep inside tissue using the OCT microscope in a needle will be described. Needle delivery makes optical imaging possible in many tissues previously inaccessible to optics. Aimed  to  be broadly  accessible,  this talk  will describe the underpinning  photonics  and  guided-wave  optics design  and  fabrication  needed  to  make  high-quality  micro-imaging  possible.  Technical advances  such  as realization  of  ultra-small  needle  probes,  extended  imaging  depth  of  focus,  handheld  micrometer-resolution tracking,  and  multimodality  needle probes  combining  OCT with  fluorescence,  and  with  elastography will  be presented. It will describe how such probes are built into photonic systems and where they are being applied, such as in breast cancer surgery, as well as how the technology may evolve and where it may be applied in the future.    

Bio: Winthrop Professor Sampson is Director of the Centre for Microscopy, Characterization & Analysis, a core facility of the University of Western Australia, and heads the Optical + Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL) in the School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering. He directs the Western Australian nodes of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility and Australia’s National Imaging Facility. He is a Fellow of the OSA and the SPIE, and an Associate Editor of IEEE Photonics Journal, the IEEE Transactions of Biomedical Engineering and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biomedical Optics and the journals Photonic Sensors and Photonics & Lasers in Medicine. W/Prof. Sampson’s research interests are in biomedical optical engineering, with an emphasis on photonics, imaging and microscopy. His current main interest, beyond advancing microscope-in-a-needle technology, is in optical elastography – the imaging of tissue mechanical properties. His other interests include anatomical optical coherence tomography for imaging in human airways, and holographic microscopy.    

Summary: Photodetectors continue to play a crucial role in fiber optic communication systems and microwave photonics as applications demand higher bandwidths, larger power levels, and increased spectral efficiencies. High-speed, high-power photodetectors are needed as conventional top-illuminated p-i-n photodiodes cannot achieve the requisite bandwidth-efficiency products, while output power levels cause a move to side-illuminated waveguide photodiodes, photodiode arrays, and novel epitaxial layer structures. Furthermore, photodetectors incorporated into photonic integrated circuits enable more complex receiver architectures for the detection of advanced modulation formats guaranteeing the highest performance and packing density at the lowest cost.

In my talk, I provide a brief introduction to photodiode fundamentals, considerations of material systems and basic structures. I present state-of-the-art 145 GHz-waveguide photodiodes and high-power photodetector arrays that have been successfully operated at bitrates as high as 160 Gbit/s and discuss the development of an integrated dual-polarization coherent receiver that has become a key component in today’s 100 Gbit/s and emerging 400 Gbit/s fiber optic links. I cover novel device structures and photodiode arrays that enabled photonic generation of highly linear microwave signals at record-high output power levels. This includes heterogeneously integrated InP-based photodiodes on silicon that achieved the highest saturation current-bandwidth products on a silicon photonics platform to date. 

Bio:  Dr. Andreas Beling received the Dipl.-Phys. degree (M.S.) in physics from the University of Bonn, Germany, in 2000 and the Dr.-Ing. degree (Ph.D.) in electrical engineering from Technical University Berlin, Germany, in 2006. He was a staff scientist in the photonics division at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut in Berlin in 2001-2006, a Research Associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia in 2006-2008, and has two years of industry experience as a project manager working on optoelectronic receivers for high-speed fiber optic communication systems. He returned to University of Virginia in late 2010 as a Research Scientist and became Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at U.Va in 2013. His research interests include high-speed photodiodes, photonic integration technologies, and optoelectronic receivers for digital communications. Andreas Beling has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical papers, two book chapters, and three patents. He is a member of the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America. 

Summary:
Every company – even the largest household names such as Google or Apple or even IBM - begins life as a start-up. Drawing on experience gained from Dr. Poole’s extensive start-up history, this presentation will look at how some of the companies and research groups in which Dr. Poole has been involved got started, what they did and how they subsequently developed and thrived. The presentation aims to inspire researchers who are considering how to commercialize their research to take the next steps and move out of the research lab and into the brave new world of commercialization. 
     Dr. Simon Poole is an engineer/entrepreneur with over 30 years experience in photonics in research, academia and industry. He has been involved in numerous successful start-ups in both Academia and industry and is renowned for both his contribution to the technology of photonics as well as the companies he has founded.    

Bio:
Dr. Simon Poole is an engineer/entrepreneur with over 30 years experience in photonics in research, academia and industry. He obtained his PhD from Southampton University in 1987 and was a member of the team that invented the Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) in 1985. In 1988 he moved to Australia and founded the Optical Fiber Technology Centre (OFTC) and subsequently Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre (APCRC) at the University of Sydney where he was director of the Sydney Node from 1991 to 1995. The APCRC grew to over 150 researchers and led to 15 start-ups which raised a total of over $250m in Venture Capital funding. 
     In 1995, Dr. Poole led the first spin-off company from the APCRC, Indx Pty Ltd which manufactured Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) for optical communications. Indx was acquired by Uniphase Corporation (now JDS Uniphase) for $US6m and subsequently grew to over 300 people with exports of over $100m pa. After leaving JDSUniphase in late 2000 he worked as a venture partner with KPLJ Ventures before co-founding Engana Pty Ltd in September 2001. 
     As Engana’s CEO Dr. Poole raised $13m in VC funding and oversaw the development and launch of Engana’s market-leading Dynamic Wavelength Processor line of Wavelength Selective Switches in early 2005. The company, now Finisar Australia, employs 280 people in Sydney and a similar number in China, with annual sales of Wavelength Selective Switches of >$100m pa. 
     In 2008, Dr. Poole started a new group within Finisar, the New Business Ventures Group, to generate new, high value added businesses using the principles of Open Innovation. The first business within this group was the highly successful WaveShaper range of Programmable Optical Processors which already has sales of over $6m pa.
     Dr. Poole is a Fellow of the IEEE in 2001 and is also a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia (FIEAust), a Senior Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (SMIET) and a Chartered Engineer (CEng). He has published over 150 refereed papers in journals and international conferences as well as filing 7 patents, including the initial patent on the EDFA.    

Summary:
With the remorseless growth in demand for telecommunication services, the capacity of optical fiber links first exceeded the capabilities of electronics, requiring the introduction of wavelength division multiplexing, and is now approaching a fundamental limit. 
This limit is due to a trade-off between the familiar Shannon limit at low signal powers, and nonlinear effects at high powers. Before considering the implications of the capacity crunch when demand finally hits this limit, this lecture will review the technological achievements which took the industry from its first commercial service with the Dorset (UK) police in 1975 through to the 10 Tbit/s systems of today.    

 

Bio:
Dr. Andrew Ellis was born in Underwood, England in 1965 and gained a BSc in Physics with a minor in mathematics from the University of Sussex, Brighton, England in 1987. He was awarded his PhD in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from The University of Aston in Birmingham, Birmingham, England in 1997 for his study on All Optical Networking beyond 10 Gbit/s. 
     He previously worked for British Telecom Research Laboratories as a Senior Research Engineer investigating the use of optical amplifiers and advanced modulation formats in optical networks and the Corning Research Centre as a Senior Research Fellow where he led activities in high speed optical component characterization. Currently, he heads the Transmission and Sensors Group at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland, where he is also a member of the Department of Physics, University College Cork. He is also an adjunct Professor of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University, and a founder of the Dublin based start-up Pilot Photonics. He research interests include all optical OFDM, optical and electrical signal processing, the mechanisms limiting capacity in optical communication systems, and the application of photonics to sensing.
     Dr. Ellis is a member of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Engineering Technology, and is a Chartered Physicist. He is an Associate Editor of Optics Express and acts as a reviewer for IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, Photonics Technology Letters and Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics. He has published over 150 journal papers and over 24 patents in the field of Photonics.    

Summary:
Prof. Cheng and his team have made milestone contributions in a series of works describing photonics packaging technology from the art and science points of view. The lecture will present the photonics packaging technology including the high-coupling packaging design of double-variable-curvature microlens employing fully automated process for higher average coupling efficiency from 980-nm lasers into single mode fibers, reduction of fiber alignment and postweld shift in laser module packaging, packaging of passively mode-locked fiber lasers employing carbon nanotubes or graphene, packaging of high-reliability glass-doped phosphor-converted high-power white-light-emitting diodes, and packaging of 300-nm ultra-broadband Cr-doped fiber amplifier for broadband transmission.    

 

Bio:
Wood-Hi Cheng is a Chair Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaoshiung, Taiwan, where he founded and became the Director of the Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering (1994–2000), and Dean of College Engineering (2002–2005). In 2007 he chaired the Southern Taiwan Opto-Electronics Center of Excellence. Presently he is a Program Director of Optoelectronics in the National Science Council of Taiwan providing research grants and direction. Prof. Cheng is a Fellow of IEEE and OSA. 
     While Dr. Cheng was in the United States, he contributed to the development and growth of high-speed semiconductor lasers with semi-insulating (SI) blocking layers at Rockwell International, CA. In 1987-1993, he was the first to propose and demonstrate low-threshold, high-power, and high-speed 1.3 mm buried crescent lasers with the iron and cobalt-doped SI current blocking layers. He also developed a high-power low-divergence superradiant diode at General Optronics, NJ. In Taiwan, Professor Cheng’s R&D made contributions to photonic package technology and technology transfer to industry (Quarton). Quarton then became the first solid-state laser company in Taiwan, and is currently the top-five sale for laser pointer in world since 1993. He was recipient of the IEEE Photonics Engineering Achievement Award in 2010 for design, development and commercialization compact solid-state laser modules. Prof. Cheng’s most significant R&D is the demonstration of record ultra-broadband 300-nm Cr-doped fibers (CDFs). The CDFs have been used for the first time as a broadband Cr-doped fiber amplifier (CDFA). With the help of optical-fiber system examination for the CDFA, a 40-Gb/s error-floor free data transmission is successfully demonstrated on fiber-optic transmission.     

Abstract
Solid-state lighting and solar photovoltaic devices typically employ optical materials comprising isotropic assemblies of atomic and molecular electric dipoles. Many nanomaterials, however, exhibit optical properties that are inconsistent with these simple models. In this talk we discuss novel optical phenomena arising from oriented “multipole antenna” resonances in organic materials and dielectric nanostructures. We identify multipolar resonances in semiconductor nanowires and show how to exploit these effects to enhance light absorption in ultrathin photovoltaics or to construct materials with optical properties not found in nature. These engineered nanomaterials also serve as models for understanding the optical properties of organic materials. We demonstrate antenna effects arising from oriented intra- and inter-molecular exciton species and describe ongoing efforts to measure and manipulate “forbidden” optical processes in heavy-atom phosphors and molecular H-aggregates. 

Bio
Jon Schuller graduated from the Physics department at UC Santa Barbara in 2003. Afterwards, he joined the Applied Physics department at Stanford University where he received his Ph.D. working with Professor Mark Brongersma. There, Schuller's research interests comprised nanophotonics, plasmonics, metamaterials, and IR spectroscopy. After graduating in 2009, he took a position as a Fellow of the Energy Frontier Research Center, where he applied nanophotonics concepts and techniques towards the fundamental study of solar cell materials and optics. In 2012 Schuller became a "born-again Gaucho," joining the ECE department as an Assistant Professor.