Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have evolved over a period of more than 30 years, from one-off devices realized with complex crystal growth steps to now foundry qualified circuits yielding high performance and wafer uniformity. This evolution was fostered by the maturation of compound semiconductor materials as well as the exploitation of already matured silicon manufacturing processes that were developed for the microelectronics industry. Although indium phosphide is the most mature photonic integration platform, a number of other technologies have emerged including silicon, silica, polymer, as well as heterogeneous platforms integrating more than one material. PICs reduce size, weight and power, and increase performance and reliability. Applications impacted by this technology include telecommunications, data center communications, high-performance computing, microwave photonics, fiber sensing, and bio sensing. This talk will provide an overview of integrated photonic technologies including materials, components, and integration platforms. A discussion of current and emerging applications will also be provided, including examples of high-performance PICs.

Biography:  Jonathan Klamkin received the B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) from Cornell University in 2002, and the M.S. degree in ECE and Ph.D. degree in materials from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2004 and 2008, respectively. From 2008-2011 he was a Member of the Technical Staff in the Electro-Optical Materials and Devices Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. From 2011-2013 he was an assistant professor and Director of the Integrated Photonic Technologies Center at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy. In 2013 he joined Boston University (BU) as an assistant professor in ECE and materials. He is also affiliated with the BU Photonics Center and leads the Integrated Photonics Group, which develops integrated photonic technologies for microwave photonics, visible light communications, space communications, telecommunications, high-performance computing, nonlinear optical signal processing, and sensing.

Prof. Klamkin has served on the Technical Program Committee for the Microwave Photonics Conference, the IEEE Photonics Conference, Photonics in Switching, the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference, and Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nanophotonics. He received best paper awards at the 2006 Conference on Optoelectronic and Microelectronic Materials and Devices and the 2007 Microwave Photonics Conference. He is the recipient of a NASA Early Career Faculty Research Grant, an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, and a Marie Curie Fellowship. Prof. Klamkin has authored or coauthored 90 papers, is a senior member of the IEEE and member of the OSA.