MICRO - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Advisor: ECE Professor Kent Choquette
When Aaron Danner was a graduate student at MNTL, he never imagined that he'd be working abroad. A decade after graduating from Illinois, though, Danner is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore exploring the on-chip integration of nonlinear optical devices-a challenging problem because the materials are difficult to process. "There are so many interesting applications that it's worthwhile to try to overcome these challenges," Danner noted.
A major aspect of his research involves materials and structures that can enhance the light-matter interaction. He and his students are interested in controlling light on the nanometer scale, which could have an impact on holography, arbitrary optical wavefront generation and detection, and optical communications.
He also teaches a class in nonlinear optics and supervises undergraduates' senior projects. "I have a team [now] making solar-powered planes and helicopters," said Danner, noting how the project is fun but challenging because of the power constraints.
Danner started his career at Agilent (now known as Avago Technologies), where he worked on 4G vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). He often traveled to Agilent's semiconductor manufacturing plant in Singapore as part of his job. He left the company in late 2006, to join the NUS faculty.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Engineering, University of Illinois, 2012 to Present / Professor, University of Illinois, August 2000 to Present
Prof. van der Zande runs an interdisciplinary research group at the nexus of nanotechnology, mechanics, and material physics. He is a team lead on the Illinois Material Research Science and Engineering Center and was recently awarded the 2022 Society of Engineering Science Young Investigator Medal, the NSF CAREER award, and is on the Clarivate Analytics list of the world's most influential researchers in 2018-2022. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal ACS Nano Letters. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 2011 and a B.S in Physics and Mathematics from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2003. He then became a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Energy Frontier Research Center at Columbia University. He has published 82+ articles with >29,000 citations in journals including Nature, Science, Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, and Nano Letters.
As Wafer Fab operations manager, Chen was responsible for Infinera's PIC factory, including wafer and die fabrication, assembly, and line maintenance operations.
Although the startup company Genoa was acquired by Finisar in 2003, Chen is proud of the team and facility he helped build there. "Some of the people I recruited right out of school are now director level, having moved up the ranks," he said. "It's really rewarding to see."
Axel Hoffmann has obtained his Diploma degree in physics from the RWTH Aachen in 1994 and his PhD degree in physics from the University of California - San Diego in 1999. Subsequently he worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2001 he joined the Argonne National Laboratory as a staff scientist, and became in 2014 the Senior Group Leader of the Magnetic Thin Film Group. In 2019 he joined the Department of Materials Science an Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Founder Professor. His research interests encompass a wide variety of magnetism related subjects, including basic properties of magnetic heterostructures, spin-transport in novel geometries, and magnetization dynamics. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Physics and a fellow of the American Physical Society, American Vacuum Society, and IEEE.
Symmetry driven irreversibilities at ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic interfaces A. Hoffmann, Physical Review Letters 93, 097203
Job Titles:
- Facility Operations Specialist
Job Titles:
- Facilities Operations Coordinator
Professor Goldschmidt's lab studies quantum light-matter interactions with atom-like emitters in solids for applications in quantum information technologies. This includes quantum memory and single photon storage in solid-state rare-earth atom ensembles. In order to take advantage of all the properties of rare-earth materials that make them appealing for such tasks, the research group investigates new materials with higher density of rare-earth atoms to push toward the possibility of long-lived, efficient, solid-state quantum memory. Another project involves coupling rare-earth atoms to resonator structures in order to couple to individual atoms. Such a system will be used as a single photon source and for spin-photon entanglement. Finally, additional projects will focus on generating, characterizing, and using non-classical light for quantum information tasks.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant Professor
Dried Blood Matrix as a New Material for the Detection of DNA Viruses. Jongwon Lim, Joanne Hwang, Hyegi Min, Matthew Wester, Chansong Kim, Enrique Valera, Hyun Joon Kong, Rashid Bashir. Advanced Healthcare Materials, 2024, 2402506.
Steady state and transient conductivity of colloidal solutions of gold nanobeads. Enrique Valera, Ángel Rodríguez, Luis M. Castañer. IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology 6 No 5 (2007) 504-508.
Early in his career, Eric Nagel (BSEE 1977) remembers sitting with his fellow product engineers at Motorola"s cafeteria in Phoenix listening to them talk about all the things they were going to do in their careers. Day after day, he listened, realizing that talking was about all they ever did.
Arnold Chen doesn't recall a specific ah-ha moment during his graduate student days at MNTL, but he's certain he developed an interest in entrepreneurship while on campus. "That seed was planted at Illinois," said Chen, who worked with ECE Professor Keh-Yung Norman Cheng on molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) crystal growth.
Chen's entrepreneurial interest grew into a passion in 1998 when he was the seventh employee to join Bay-area startup Genoa, which was developing a new type of optical amplifier for metro and telecommunication applications. Chen used his MBE expertise to grow material, and he managed the development of the company's new fabrication facility and operations.
"We ramped extraordinarily fast, reaching about 100 employees within three years, and then the bubble burst" said Chen, noting that the recession of 2001 took its toll on the company, which was sold to another optical communications company in 2003.
Tapping into his network of Illinois-MNTL alumni, Chen then went to work for Fred Kish, who was vice president of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development at Infinera, another Bay Area startup. Chen worked as a process engineer for several years before taking charge of Infinera's cleanroom and PIC fabrication operation.
During those eight years, the company grew from less than 100 employees to more than 1,000, said Chen, who decided it was time to return to a start-up environment.
The opportunity arrived in 2011 through a friend's cousin, who had recently co-founded Aurrion, the maker of a hybrid silicon photonic integration platform for data center applications. At Aurrion, Chen served as vice president of operations, helping develop the company's strategy, culture, technical roadmap, and operations.
In August, Chen will begin a new chapter in his career as a faculty entrepreneur in residence at Purdue University, where he can share his knowledge and experience with the next generation of engineers. "When you work in Silicon Valley, you're burning the candle at both ends and you can only do that for so long," said Chen, who is returning to his hometown and where he earned his bachelor's degree. "It was a family life decision-my wife and I have two young children."
Chen is grateful for his Illinois education, particularly his hands-on experience learning MBE at MNTL. "Being trained in MBE requires a lot of patience because the tool can break at times," he said. "It really forced me to learn to have patience and plan out experiments, while giving me a solid engineering background."
His advice for current MNTL students: Do an internship. "The majority of you will work for a company that makes a real product, so get real-world experience before you graduate," said Chen, who did a summer internship at Bell Labs while still in graduate school. "The reality is if you do really well at an internship, you'll probably be asked back. If you do well again, you'll be offered a job because you've been vetted and have proven that you can do it."
I.H. Grinberg, M. Lin, W.A. Benalcazar, T.L. Hughes, G. Bahl, "Observation of a trapped state at a dislocation in a weak magneto-mechanical topological insulator," Phys. Rev. Applied 14, 064042, 2020. *Selected as Editor's Suggestion.
C.W. Peterson, W.A. Benalcazar, T.L. Hughes, G. Bahl, "Demonstration of a quantized microwave quadrupole insulator with topologically protected corner states," Nature 555, pp.346-350, doi:10.1038/nature25777, 2018.
Job Titles:
- Professor in Mechanical Science and Engineering ( Feb 2023 ) Fellow of Optica ( Oct 2022 )
Job Titles:
- Director of Cleanroom Operations
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Robert W Schafer Professor
Hyunjoon (Joon) Kong is a Robert W Schafer Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He also is affiliated with the Departments of Bioengineering and Pathobiology and is a member of the Regenerative Biology & Tissue Engineering research theme at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Professor Kong joined the department in 2007. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan and was a research associate at Harvard University. At Illinois, he has developed various active hybrid materials including stimulus-responsive or self-propelling colloids and hydrogels systems. He further uses the materials for molecular and cell therapies of vascular and brain diseases as well as an infection. Prof. Kong has authored or co-authored more than 150 research papers and over 8 issued and pending patent applications. He received multiple research awards. He also serves as a member of the international editorial board of Biomaterials. and the editorial board of Biofabrication.
Lee, M.K., Rich, M., Lee, J.H., & Kong, H.J. A bio-inspired, microchanneled hydrogel with controlled spacing of cell adhesion ligands regulates 3D spatial organization of cells and tissue. Biomaterials 58:26-34 (2015).
Cha, C., Kim, S., Cao, L., & Kong, H.J. Decoupled control of stiffness and permeability of cell-encapsulated poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogel. Biomaterials 31:4864-4871 (2010).
Kong, H.J., Boontheekul, T., & Mooney, D.J. Quantifying the relation between adhesion ligand-receptor bond formation and cell phenotype. Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (USA) 103:18534-18539 (2006).
Job Titles:
- Facility Operations Specialist
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Business and Finance
Kent D. Choquette received B.S. degrees in Engineering Physics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado-Boulder and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1990 to 1992 he held a postdoctoral appointment at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. He then joined Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, and from 1993 to 2000 was a Principal Member of Technical Staff. While at Sandia in 1994 he invented and demonstrated the first monolithic selectively oxidized vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) which today is referred to as the oxide-confined VCSEL, which is manufactured around the world for data communication and sensing applications. Since 2000 he is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois and leads the Photonic Device Research Group focused on the design, fabrication, characterization, and applications of vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), photonic crystal light sources, nanofabrication technologies, and hybrid integration techniques for photonic devices.
Dr. Choquette has authored over 300 technical publications and three book chapters, and has presented numerous invited talks and tutorials. He is past Associate Editor of the Journal of Lightwave Technology, Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, IEEE Photonic Technology Letters, and as a Guest Editor of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics. He was awarded the 2008 IEEE/Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award, the 2012 Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award from the Optical Society of America, the 2013 Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Photonics Society, and the 2016 Technology Achievement Award from SPIE. He has served as the IEEE Photonics Society Vice President of Conferences, Vice President of Technical Affairs, President Elect, 2016-2017 as the President, and past President. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of Optica, a Fellow of SPIE, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
When he was an electrical engineering graduate student at Illinois, Paul Leisher, enjoyed teaching undergraduates about lasers and optics as a teaching assistant. After a successful stint in industry, Leisher has returned to the classroom as an associate professor of physics & optical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, where he also supervises undergraduates' research projects.
Leisher, who joined the Rose-Hulman faculty in 2011, has taught courses in geometric optics, lens design, semiconductor physics, semiconductor devices, a laser physics lab, as well as an introductory (100-level) course in optics and technology. According to Leisher, even when he was an Illinois graduate student, he knew he ultimately wanted to be a professor.
Although Rose-Hulman's primary focus is undergraduate education, Leisher has established a research lab, where he can supervise students' projects on the design and characterization of high-power semiconductor lasers.
After earning his doctorate in 2007, Leisher worked at nLight Corp for several years, starting as a device engineer and working his way up to be manager of advanced technology. He helped develop high-power semiconductor lasers. He also managed the writing of grant proposals for these lasers and oversaw the funding for their development.
Leisher recalls his mentors at nLight were "fantastic and taught [him] a lot," which was very beneficial as he was the company's first entry-level hire straight out of school. According to Leisher, when someone asked him for help, he prioritized this above other things and he credits this for helping his career in many ways.
As a professor, Leisher has stayed active in the industry through consulting jobs with seven companies over the last three years-from small (approximately 20-person staffs) to Fortune 500 companies both in the United States and abroad. In his consulting role, he has done technical consulting for high-power semiconductor diode laser development and manufacturing including the design, fabrication, characterization, data analysis and reliability. Within his community at Rose-Hulman, staff are encouraged to stay active in the industry as well to provide a link for students through professors to the industry.
Taking a look back to his graduate student days in ECE Professor Kent Choquette's group at Illinois, Leisher remembers late nights and long hours in the clean rooms conducting research on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers while the rest of the building was a construction zone, undergoing a two-year expansion to add lab, research, classroom, and meeting space.
Another thing Leisher remembers was the competitive atmosphere that surrounded research conducted in the laboratory. He wants current and future students to realize it is mutually beneficial to approach research in a cooperative manner. He advises students to help others when asked because there will come a time when you need help in return.
"In the long term this results in many positive things including a better understanding of others and your own research," Leisher said. "I want my students to know that everyone is in the same boat together."
Job Titles:
- Advisor: Brian Cunningham
Leo Chan created and manages the Technology R&D Department at Nexcelom Bioscience, a privately held cell-counting solutions company near Boston. Since 2009, he has helped shepherd five new instruments from initial concept to product launch, and he has increased the company's patent filings five-fold.
He has also stayed active in research, developing customer-specific cell-based assays for image-based cytometry systems, multiple fluorescent reagents and buffer product kits, and novel polymers for microfluidic consumable products.
According to Chan, one of the best parts of working for a small company is the variety of tasks he faces each day. "I'm doing sales, demos, technical support, visiting customers, writing research papers and marketing content, and developing technology," Chan said. "I have a lot of freedom to do what I want to do, and I know what I do has a big impact on the end user."
He was part of the team at Illumina that developed a technology platform capable of sequencing an entire human genome for $1,000, making sequencing more affordable and accessible than ever before. "The $1,000 genome is revolutionizing science and technology," he said. "Being part of that team is the number one trophy I have in my cabinet." Venkatesan has since gone on to contribute to the development of several other platform technologies including the Nextseq 500 and Project Firefly, Illumina's first tabletop CMOS-based sequencer.
A. VanDevender and P. G. Kwiat. High-speed transparent switch via frequency up-conversion. Opt. Exp. 15, 4677-4683 (2007).
A University of Notre Dame faculty member, Pinar Zorlutuna is using microfabrication, biomaterials, stem cells, and tissue engineering approaches to create bioengineered disease models to study heart disease and cancer. According to Zorlutuna, scientists are creating these new models in order to overcome some of the limitations found in animal models.
"Usually only one out of 10 therapies that are proven to be successful in mice can be applied successfully to humans," she said. "One reason is mice and humans are different so these human cell-based tissue engineered and microfabricated disease models are meant to bridge that gap and have a platform where one can study the effects of drug therapy or study the disease biology."
A second area of her research involves studying electromechanical signals between cells in heart tissue. She and her students created micro-patterned cardiac cell co-cultures to examine how micro- and nanoscale stimulation change the way heart cells contract, which could have applications in heart disease treatment and bio-robotics.
Zorlutuna spent two years (2009-11) as a post-doctoral researcher in Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir's lab at the Micro + Nanotechnology Lab, where she was part of a team that used stereolithography-a maskless photolithography fabrication technique-to engineer tissues made of biocompatible materials and cells.
"We showed for the first time that the [tissues] we fabricated this way could be functional, viable, and cultured for long term," said Zorlutuna, noting that several of their papers were cover articles in journals such as Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials.
Working with Bashir helped Zorlutuna launch her faculty career. "Dr. Bashir is a great mentor and a wonderful person," she noted. "He gave me a lot of advice on how to mentor graduate students that I worked with and he taught me how to highlight my research and apply for faculty positions, write grants, and find money for research."
Recalling her time at Illinois, Zorlutuna said she benefitted from going to research presentations and seminars. "There are so many great researchers in [MNTL] that I'd encourage current students to go listen to speakers-even if it seems like they're not relevant to what you're doing," she said. "Listening to other people who work in slightly different areas opens your mind a lot and helps you think outside the box."
Zorlutuna also encourages MNTL students to stay in touch with their colleagues after they leave Illinois. "One of my most successful collaborations right now is with a former student from Dr. Bashir's group, Kidong Park, who is a faculty member at LSU," she said. "We never collaborated at MNTL, but we saw each other at a conference a couple of years ago and we started a collaboration."
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Bioengineering Professor