Hello,

Recently, Michal Lipson, who served on my committee and is a co-author on some of my papers, won a MacArthur “genius” grant. These grants are awarded to pioneering researchers in a wide array of fields, and offer 500,000USD of unrestricted research funds over 5 years. These grants also connect these researchers to a new class of opportunities, because of the notoriety attached to this high-profile grant.

Therefore, I thought it would be timely for me to give a brief overview of Michal’s research interests. Professor Lipson runs on of the top silicon nanophotonics groups in the country. Her flavor of silicon nanophotonics focuses on making CMOS-compatible devices for both practical applications and basic research.

CMOS-compatible devices are a class of nanotechnology that can be manufactured using the most common microprocessor manufacturing technology. That means that the devices Michal’s group makes can be easily integrated with existing computer technology. In addition, these devices should be inexpensive to manufacture on a large scale.

The majority of the practical applications fall in the realm of “data interconnects.” Currently, computer chips are becoming more sophisticated they often have many components that need to talk to each other at very high data rates. Light is a very high-frequency wave. The frequency of a wave is directly proportional to the rate at which you can send information on it. Therefore, if you could use light as the communication medium for these chip components, you would be able to take advantage of the high date rates light can support.

However, there are many challenges. You have to make small devices that could be added to a microchip. You have to demonstrate that photonics can have better performance than electronics, which are getting better every day. Currently, there are no methods for making a CMOS-compatible laser. This means you need another separately-manufactured device to run you system. The people in Michal’s group are leaders in meeting these challenges.

Moving away from particle applications to more basic research, Michal’s group has interest in expanding their contributions in quantum optics, both in single-photon sources and quantum cryptography.

Recently, the group has demonstrated an implementation of transformational optics. Technically, this is not “cloaking,” but it has similar applications. By controlling the refractive index of the medium surrounding an object, one can alter the path of the light rays such that it would appear the object it not there.