UT Shield

Dan Wasserman

Mid-IR Photonics Lab

Group Members

Current Group Members

Professor Wasserman

Prof. Dan Wasserman is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas Austin, where he is affiliated with the Microelectronics Research Center, and holds the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professorship in Engineering #3.  Prof. Wasserman earned his Sc.B. degree in Engineering/Physics and History from Brown University in 1998. He attended graduate school at Princeton University, receiving his Master’s and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 2000 and 2004, respectively.  Upon completion of the Ph.D. program, Dr. Wasserman spent the next years working on quantum cascade lasers and developing a hands-on optics course at Princeton, in the group of Prof. Claire Gmachl.  In 2007, Dr. Wasserman joined the University of Massachusetts Lowell faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Applied Physics.  In 2007, Prof. Wasserman joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, in the Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, becoming an Associate Professor in 2015. In 2016, Professor Wasserman joined the University of Texas at Austin.  Prof. Wasserman is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, as well as the UIUC Distinguished Promotion Award, and Teaching and Advising awards and commendations at UMass and Illinois.  In 2018, Prof. Wasserman was named a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Post-Doctoral Scientists

Zarko Sakotic: Zarko Sakotic received his B.S. and M.S degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia in 2015 and 2016 respectively. He received his PhD degree in physics in 2021 at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. His current research is focused on the design of mid- and far-infrared devices based on novel metamaterial and photonic concepts.

Saadia Nasir: Saadia received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan, in 2015 and 2017, respectively. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from The University of Delaware in 2024, where she investigated the MBE growth and plasmonic properties of the V2-VI3 topological insulators. Currently, her research focuses on the design, epitaxial growth, and characterization of long-wave Infrared detectors.

Current Graduate Students

Zuoming Dong: Zuoming Dong received his B.S. degree in Optical Science and Technology from Zhejiang University in 2016. His current research is focused on the development of highly doped semiconductor materials supporting Surface Plasmon Polaritons, and utilizing these materials to realize surface plasmon-based high speed optical switches.

Morgan Bergthold: Morgan’s current research focuses on designing angle dependent dual-band mid-wave infrared and long wave infrared absorbing elements for mid-wave infrared detectors. She is also developing a coherent filter device for IR imaging applications. She received her B.S. degree in Physics from Davidson College in 2020.

Amogh Raju: Amogh received his B.E. in Electronics and Instrumentation from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science-Pilani, India in 2020. His current research focuses on Metamaterial-based devices and non-linear Silicon Photonics.

Félix A. Estévez H.: Félix received his B.S. degree in Engineering Science from The Pennsylvania State University in 2021.  Félix research will focus on the design, fabrication and characterization of enhanced absorption, ultra-thin, far-infrared (>25 micron) detectors.

Alexander Ware: Alexander received his B.S. degree in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in June of 2021. His undergraduate research involved the development of near-IR fiber amplifiers for project STARLIGHT at UCSB.

Noah Mansfield: Noah received his B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering in May of 2021 from the University of South Carolina. During his undergraduate, his course focus covered semiconductor electronics and optoelectronics. He was also briefly part of a research group focused on systems health management for naval applications.

Yadviga Tischenko: Yadviga received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 2022. Her undergraduate studies focused on photonics and semiconductor physics. She is currently interested in molecular epitaxial growth and fabrication of ultra-thin detectors on GaAs and Si substrates.

Madeline Brown: Madeline received her B.S. in Applied Physics in 2019 and M.S. in Physics in 2021, both from Texas Tech University. Her previous graduate research primarily focused on the simulation of secondary electron emission, and her current interests include the design and fabrication of topological photonic devices.

Will Doyle: Will Doyle received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 2022. His current research is focused on the development of solid state shaken-lattice atom interferometers for remote sensing applications. His interests also include clean energy, space exploration, and robotics.

Divya Hungund: Divya received the B.Tech degree in 2020 from CMR University, Bangalore, India, majoring in Electronics and Communication Engineering. She has worked on developing Inductive Edge Sensors for segmented mirror telescopes as an Engineer Trainee at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and Radio Frequency Identification and Power over Ethernet as Research Staff at the Indian Institute of Science.  Divya will be working on nonlinear complex oxide based opto-electronics.

Yonathan Magendzo: Yonathan received his B.A. in Physics from Yeshiva University in 2023. His undergraduate research focused on magnetic susceptibility measurements from MRI and Atomic force microscopy.

Hee Gon Kim: Hee Gon received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Korea University in 2022 and the University of Southern California in 2024, respectively. His current research focuses on nonlinear opto-electronics for integrated photonic circuits and photonic quantum computing.

Daniel Krueger: Daniel Krueger received his B.S. from the University of Texas in 2023 in Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on using integrated photonics for sensing applications. He is interested in designing integrated photonic structures and detector design.

Liang Tian: Liang Tian received his B.S. degree in Electronic Science and Technology from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2024. His previous undergraduate research primarily focused on the simulation of passive optical devices, and his current research focuses on nonlinear optics and photonic quantum sensing.

Current Undergraduates

We are always looking for motivated undergraduates to join the group!!

Former Group Members

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Aaron Muhowski (2019-2022). Current staff scientist at Sandia National Labs

Stephanie Law-Toner (2012-2014).  Currently an Associate Professor at the University of Delaware, Materials Science Department.

Yujun Zhong (2014-2016).

Graduate Students

  1. Yinan Wang – PhD 2024, Post-doc in Prof. Ruochen Lu’s Lab UT Austin
  2. Priyanka Petluru – PhD 2023, Post-doc at Sandia National Labs
  3. Abhilasha Kamboj – PhD 2022, Post-doc in Prof. Jamie Phillips Lab, University of Delaware
  4. Leland Nordin – PhD 2021, Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida/CREOL
  5. Kun Li – PhD 2021, Currently at Applied Materials, NY
  6. Sukrith Dev – PhD 2020, Currently at AFRL Eglin AFB
  7. Narae Yoon – PhD 2019. Currently at Intel Austin.
  8. Lan Yu – PhD 2016. Currently at Applied Materials, NY
  9. Runyu Liu – PhD 2016. Currently at Apple.
  10. William Streyer – PhD 2016. Research Engineer for the iBioFAB at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
  11. Daniel Zuo – PhD 2015.  Currently at Night Vision Labs.
  12. Aaron Rosenberg- Masters 2014. Currently employed at Nova Research.
  13. Andrew Taylor- Masters 2013. Currently employed at Lockheed Martin.
  14. Joshua Mason – PhD 2012
  15. David Adams – PhD 2012, currently (tenure track) Instructor at Harvard Medical School.
  16. Troy Ribaudo- PhD 2011, currently employed at Lam Research.
  17. Kevin Anglin- Master’s Degree 2010. Completed Ph.D. at UMass Lowell, currently employed at Lincoln Labs.
  18. David Slocum- Master’s Degree 2011: Completed Ph.D. at UMass Lowell in the Sub-Millimeter Wave Technology Lab.

Visiting Scholars

  1. Prof. Kwang Seob Jeong, Korea University, Summer 2023
  2. Haemin Song, Korea University, Summer 2023
  3. Shaohua Wang (2016-2017)

RETs

  1. Kathy Rogers (Summer 2019)

Undergraduate Students

  1. Asher Tangton (UT Austin) Fall 2024
  2. Mya Dean (Hampton University) Summer 2024
  3. Laney Windlan (Florida State University) Summer 2024
  4. Sasha Malysheva (University of Chicago) Summer 2024
  5. Opel Jones II (Hampton University) Summer 2023: Femtosecond laser control and calibration
  6. Wilmer Ramirez (UT Austin), Summer 2023: Imaging system for micro-PL experiment
  7. Shannon Lei (UT Austin) Summer 2023: Synthesis and fabrication of Te nanowires.
  8. Anthony Poole (UT Austin) Spring 2023
  9. Troy Dutton (UT Austin) Fall 2022
  10. Jazmine Riggins (Hampton University), Summer 2022
  11. Sebastian Renta (University of Puerto Rico) Summer 2022
  12. Jordan Nobles (Hampton University), Summer 2021
  13. Keith Stewart (Hampton University), Summer 2021
  14. Nicholas Duggar (AY 2020-2021): Development of an cavity based optical limiter (Senior Thesis).  Nicholas is entering the PhD program at UIUC in the Fall of 2021, he will be working if Prof. Lynford Goddard’s group.
  15. Alex Raterink (UT, Summer 2020): High speed thermal flash.  Alex will be joining the Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology PhD program at Rice University in the Fall of 2021!!
  16. Jay Yadav (Grinnell, Summer 2020): Software interface and enhancements to RCWA code.
  17. Cfir Boim (UT Dallas, Summer 2020): Modelling type-II semiconductor quantum dots.
  18. Robert Adkins (Hampton University, summer 2019)
  19. William “Tre” Anderson (Hampton University, summer 2019)
  20. Frank Yang (Rice University, summer 2019)
  21. Christopher Johnson (Hampton University, summer 2018)
  22. Jessica Heerboth (UT, summer 2018)
  23. John Le (UT, summer 2018)
  24. Morgan Bergthold (Davidson, summer 2018)
  25. Farrah Madkour (UT, Spring 2018)
  26. Jared Vochoska (UT, Spring 2018)
  27. Max Dauber (UT, Spring 2018)
  28. Yazan Alatrach (UT, Summer 2017):  Yazan’s summer project was the development of a Mathematica web-based textbook for EE325.
  29. Zipporah Goldenfeld: Zippy worked on the modeling and characterization of mid-IR narrowband filters.
  30. Augustine Koh: Working on gain characterization of mid-IR lasers
  31. Mike Mishal: Scaling of RF resonant optical detectors
  32. Joshua Surya – Summer 2013-Spring 2015.  Josh worked on flat plasmonic structures fabricated from doped Si as well as self-assembled mid-IR metamaterials.  Josh is currently a graduate student at Yale University.
  33. Narae Yoon- 2014: Narae spent her summer and Spring and Fall of 2014 working on developing code to model carrier recombination in narrow bandgap semiconductor materials. She joined the Wasserman group as a PhD student in Spring 2015!
  34. Travis Hamilton- 2013-2014: Simulating and testing selective thermal emitters using surface plasmon polaritons. Travis graduated from the UIUC ECE Department in December 2014, completing his senior thesis with Dr. Wasserman.  Travis is currently a PhD student at Northwestern University.
  35. Torin Kilpatrick-Summer, Fall 2012, Spring 2013: Development of MEEP (FDTD shareware) capabilities for simulations of mid-IR plasmonic structures. Graduate Student in Lyding group at UIUC.
  36. Nish Nookola-Summer, Fall 2012, Spring 2013: Design and characterization of a geometry-dependent selective thermal emitter structure for mid-IR spectroscopy applications. Currently PhD student at UT-Austin.
  37. Gino Rooney-Summer, Fall 2012, Spring 2013: Nanostructured doped Silicon for selective thermal emission. Currently a Master’s student at Stanford University.
  38. Tom Jacobs -Summer, Fall 2012, Spring 2013: Nanostructured doped Silicon for selective thermal emission. Employed at Itivity in Chicago, IL.
  39. Jose (Robby) Regalbuto- Summer 2012: Mid-IR imaging system development, EOT with patterned, doped semiconductors, and monolayer deposition of thiols on semiconductor films.
  40. Eric Sanchez -Spring 2013: Development of outreach modules for K-12 Photonics education.
  41. Simrin Wahal- Summer 2013: Development of GUI for Transfer Matrix Method modeling of multilayer dielectric/metal structures.
  42. Eric Nagy- Summer 2010: Mid-IR PLasmonics for Sensing and Steering applications.
  43. Shuan Smith – Summer 2010: Selective thermal emission from patterned steel substrates. Summer 2009: Physics I course development.
  44. Zachariah Johnson – 2009: Selective thermal emission from patterned substrates. Graduated 2010 (UML Physics).
  45. Cynthia Mitchell – Physics I course development.
  46. Chris Reidy – Mid-IR Quantum Cascade Lasers with polymer electrical isolation layers. Graduated Spring 2009, currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Physics Department at Oregon State University.
  47. Melissa Spencer – Capstone Project: Mid-IR Quantum Cascade Lasers with polymer electrical isolation layers. Graduated Spring 2009, currently at MIT Lincoln Labs.