News

Professor Theodore Moustakas to receive 2010 MBE Innovator Award

Published: August 20th, 2010

Each year the North America MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) community nominates several scholars for the MBE Innovator Award. Professor Theodore Moustakas has been selected as the 2010 recipient. His citation reads “For pioneering contributions in the development of MBE growth of nitride materials and the development of nitride optoelectronic devices prepared by MBE”.

Professor Moustakas will be presented his award, on September 28, 2010, at the annual North America MBE Conference Banquet in Breckenridge, CO. This award consists of $3,000 check from Veeco Instruments and a plaque from the North America MBE Advisory Board.

Photonics Center Dean’s Fellowships

Published: August 18th, 2010

The Photonics Center is proud to announce three Photonics Center Dean’s Fellowship awardees for the 2010-2011 academic year. Each year, top incoming graduate students from the eight departments affiliated with the Photonics Center are awarded fellowships to work in one of the Photonics Center’s laboratories. The recipients for this year are: Jinwang Tan in Mechanical Engineering, Linxi Wu in Chemistry and Lingyue Cao in Physics.

Jinwang Tan is joining BU from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a Masters in Biomedical Engineering. He will work with Professors Xin Zhang and Catherine Klapperich. Linxi Wu is joining BU from Peking University in Beijing, China with a BS in Chemistry. She will work with Professor Bjorn Reinhard’s group. Lingyue Cao is joining BU from Nanjing University with a BS in Physics. He will work with Professor Averitt’s group.

Reinhard Student Awarded SPIE Scholarship

Published: May 6th, 2010

Guoxin Rong, a graduate student in Professor Bjoern Reinhard’s Nano-Bio Interface Laboratory has been awarded the SPIE, Optical Design and Engineering Scholarship for the 2010 – 2011 Academic Year. The Optical Design and Engineering Scholarship was established in honor of Bill Price and Warren Smith, both well-respected members of SPIE's technical community. This $2000 award is presented each year to a full-time undergraduate or graduate student in the field of optical design and engineering.

For the 2010 – 2011 Academic Year, SPIE will be awarding over $320,000 with individual scholarships ranging from $2,000 to $11,000 in 86 countries. SPIE scholarships are open to full- and part-time students studying worldwide in an optics, photonics, imaging, or optoelectronics program or related discipline.

Professor Reinhard is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and is a member of the Boston University Photonics Center. Dr. Reinhard’s Nano-Bio Interface Lab is located on the 7th Floor of the Photonics Center.

Hatice Altug Awarded ONR Young Investigator Award

Published: April 8th, 2010

Professor Hatice Altug was awarded the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award on Wednesday, April 7, 2010. For her proposal, High-performance Nano-plasmonic Sensors for Biological Warfare Agent Detection, the ONR awarded Dr. Altug’s group three years of financial support. Professor Altug is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and is a member of the BU Photonics Center.

The ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) was established in 2008 with the mission of identifying and supporting academic scientists and engineers who have recently received their Ph.D. or equivalent and show promise in conducting creative research. The program seeks exceptional faculty members from a variety of educational institutions to support their research, and encourage their teaching and research careers. Individuals applying for a Young Investigator award submit a research proposal requesting up to $170,000 per year for three years.

For more information about the Young Investigators Program, Visit the Office of Naval Research at: www.onr.navy.mil

Hatice Altug Named Liaison to WIEC

Published: February 8th, 2010

The IEEE Photonics Society has named BUPC faculty member, Hatice Altug, to be the 2010 liaison to the Women in Engineering Committee (WIEC). Liaisons act as a conduit between their respective societies and the WIEC. Following is a short description of what the job entails:
• Foster an awareness of IEEE Women in Engineering.
• Participate in WIEC monthly meetings and report to their society on WIE status and activities.
• Inform the WIEC of their society’s activities that might be of interest to the WIE membership.
• Support Society members in the establishment of a WIE group, helping to identify volunteers and training them.
• Provide guidance for new initiatives or for assistance in the procurement of funds for activities that support the objectives of the Society.
• Provide support and help to WIE members or WIE groups in the Society to maintain a good level of activity.
• Be responsible for editing articles for Society publications, both online and in print.
• Provide timely contributions to the Society newsletter and encourage WIE members to provide articles as well.
• Support Society membership activities utilizing WIE growth to increase the participation of women within IEEE.

Each year the WIEC asks the thirty-eight IEEE societies to appoint a representative to the committee. The representative position is a non-voting position and serves for the calendar year.

Applied Physics Letters Selects ECE/Photonics Research for Cover Story

Published: January 14th, 2010

Applied Physics Letters, a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Institute of Physics, has selected research from the lab of ECE Assistant Professor Hatice Altug as the cover story for its January 11, 2010 issue. The research, which focused on on merging nanoplasmonics with nanofluidics, was authored by ECE Research Associate Ahmet Ali Yanik, ECE PhD students Min Huang and Alp Artar, Professor Altug, and Tsung-Yao Chang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The following is an abstract of the article, which can be found on the Applied Physics Letters website or in the January 11, 2010 print edition of the publication:

Integrated Nanoplasmonic-nanofluidic Biosensors with Targeted Delivery of Analytes

Performances of the biosensors are often limited by the depletion zones created around the sensing area which impede the effective analyte transport. To overcome this limitation, we propose and demonstrate a nanoplasmonic-nanofluidic sensor enabling targeted delivery of analytes to the sensor surface with dramatic improvements in mass transport efficiency. Our sensing platform is based on extraordinary light transmission effect in suspended plasmonic nanoholes. This scheme allows three-dimensional control of the fluidic flow by connecting separate layers of microfluidic channels through plasmonic/nanofluidic holes. To implement the proposed sensor platform, we also introduce a lift-off free nanofabrication method.

Ramachandran Named OSA Fellow

Published: January 14th, 2010

ECE Associate Professor Siddharth Ramachandran was recently elevated to the rank of fellow by the Board of Directors of the Optical Society of America (OSA). Ramachandran was recognized by the OSA for his “pioneering contributions to fiber optics, including spatial mode conversion and the use of higher-order modes for fiber lasers and nonlinear optical devices.”

The OSA is a scientific association that brings together optics and photonics scientists, engineers, educators, and business leaders from more than 95 countries. The society was organized to increase and diffuse the knowledge of optics; promote the interests of optics researchers, designers, and users; and to encourage cooperation among them. OSA members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics may be proposed for election to the class of Fellow, an honor that is given to no more than ten percent of the total membership of more than 15,000.

BUPC Professor Hatice Altug and students publish major PNAS Paper

Ultra-sensitive vibrational spectroscopy of protein monolayers with plasmonic nanoantenna arrays, Click here to read

National Science Foundation Article
BU College of Engineering Press Release

Shane Telescope upgrade includes MEMS deformable mirrors designed by Professor Thomas Bifano

On September 26, 2009, the Lick Observatory at the University of California, Santa Cruz celebrated its 50th Anniversary with an adaptive optics upgrade to the Shane Telescope. The two million dollar upgrade, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, includes Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) deformable mirrors, designed by Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) Director, Professor Thomas Bifano.

Adaptive optics are used in astronomy to reduce the distortion of astronomical objects caused by atmospheric turbulence. Typically, images produced by telescopes are blurred due to interference from various layers of temperature and wind in the earth’s atmosphere. The image is corrected with the use of a deformable mirror, a wavefront sensor and a laser guide star (LGS). The LGS used at the Shane Telescope is known as a sodium guide star. This LGS is used to excite sodium atoms in the atmosphere, giving scientists a fixed point in the sky. The wavefront sensor, connected to a computer sends light wavelength information to the deformable mirror in the telescope several times a second. The deformable mirror is a hand assembled glass mirror with transducers glued to the back to adjust its shape. Once receiving the information from the wavefront sensor, the mirror adjusts to the wavelength, removing the blur from the image.

The mirror architecture and prototypes were developed in Professor Bifano’s laboratory at the BUPC and were produced for the Shane Telescope by Boston Micromachines Corporation where Professor Bifano serves as Chief Technology Officer. The new mirrors replace a decades old system and will allow scientists at Lick Observatory to correct images faster, more precisely and more economically. The new system will substantially improve image sharpness in the Shane Telescope instruments. Dr. Dan Gavel, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is leading this effort.