3Qs: Jelena Notaros on the new Silicon Photonics class within 6-5, Electrical Engineering With Computing

Starting in Fall 2024, EECS is launching 6-5, “Electrical Engineering With Computing” as the sole new electrical engineering major. One of the signal changes of the new degree is the organization of upper-level classes into tracks, including an undergraduate engineering sequence in Electromagnetics and Photonics. Jelena Notaros, Assistant Professor in EECS, developed a new class included in that track, “Silicon Photonics”.

Let’s start with a really basic question. Why is the field of silicon photonics so exciting right now?

What gets me extremely excited about the field of silicon photonics is that we are developing photonic microsystems that have the potential to enable next-generation optical technologies that could facilitate revolutionary advances for numerous real-world applications, but we are still very grounded in electromagnetics, optics, and device physics – three core fundamental topics in electrical engineering. 

In the field of silicon photonics, we are leveraging the same processes that are normally used to fabricate standard computer chips. However, instead of fabricating electronic devices – transistors – on these chips and using them to manipulate electrical signals, we fabricate the chips to confine, guide, and manipulate light directly on the chip. Using this technology, we can integrate millions of micro-scale optical components into compact millimeter-scale chips – integrating optical systems that were once complex and bulky into very compact and flat form factors.

The initial driving applications for the field were in telecom and datacom. But, now, we’re starting to see new emerging applications of silicon photonics such as LiDAR sensors for autonomous systems, holographic augmented-reality and virtual-reality displays, interfacing to various types of qubits for quantum computing, and extremely sensitive chemical and biological sensors. There are so many exciting and high-impact applications that are beginning to be addressed with silicon photonics.

Tell me more about the new Silicon Photonics class that you developed. What were some of the challenges in developing a silicon-photonics lab class?

My students and I developed a new first-of-its-kind Silicon Photonics class for the MIT EECS department that introduces students to this exciting field. The course covers the foundational concepts behind silicon photonics grounded in electromagnetics, optics, and device physics; the design of silicon-photonics-based devices using both theoretical analysis and state-of-the-art simulation tools; the engineering of silicon-photonics-based circuits and systems for a variety of emerging application areas; the development of silicon-photonics-based fabrication platforms; and even experimental characterization through hands-on lab exercises with state-of-the-art equipment.

Normally, a silicon-photonics class offered elsewhere would just cover the theory and design aspects. But, for our class, we strived to go beyond just lecture-based learning by developing a class with hands-on labs, where the students can put their theoretical knowledge to practice by testing real cutting-edge silicon-photonics chips with industry-standard instrumentation.

Developing this class, and especially the hands-on lab aspect, took an enormous amount of effort. Not only did we develop all the class materials from scratch, including the syllabus, lectures, homework, simulation exercises, and lab exercises, but we also built a brand-new research-grade silicon-photonics teaching laboratory just for the class with three electronic-photonic probe stations and designed an accompanying custom silicon-photonics education chipset. This process required a lot of interaction with companies, including securing significant donations and discounts from many of them. We are thankful especially to Keysight, FormFactor, New Imaging Technologies, Ansys Lumerical, and Thorlabs for their support.

And, most importantly, I am personally incredibly grateful to all of my students who put in huge amount of time and effort to help develop this class, including Milica Notaros, Alex Sludds, Saumil Bandyopadhyay, Daniel DeSantis, Andres Garcia Coleto, Ashton Hattori, Sabrina Corsetti, and Tal Sneh.

How are students responding to this new class? 

It’s been just so incredibly rewarding for us to see so many students excited about the class. I think students are excited to have the opportunity to take a class where they can learn about a cutting-edge field, test real state-of-the-art chip hardware using industry-standard equipment, apply the core foundational concepts that they learned in their prior classes, and build up relevant expertise that they can use in their future industry or research careers.

We’re seeing students joining the class, not only from the electrical-engineering side, but also from computer science, physics, materials science, math, and aerospace engineering. We’ve even had quite a few students coming from other universities to MIT just to take the class. And what’s been really wonderful is seeing students at various stages in their careers, from freshmen undergraduate students through to senior graduate students and even postdoctoral scholars, taking the class. All standing at the same optical table. All learning about the incredible field of silicon photonics. And all getting excited about electrical-engineering hardware.