Research team members
Yurii A. Vlasov
Dr. Yurii Vlasov is a Research Staff Member and Manager at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center. He has lead the IBM team on silicon integrated nanophotonics for on-chip optical interconnects since joining IBM in 2001. He has major accomplishments in the area of photonic crystals and other silicon nanophotonic devices and circuits, including slow light delay lines, modulators, switches, WDM filters, etc.
Prior to IBM, Dr. Vlasov has developed semiconductor photonic crystals at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, and at the Strasbourg IPCMS Institute, France. He also was, for over a decade, a Research Scientist with the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology in St. Petersburg, Russia working on optics of semiconductors and photonic crystals. He received his MS from the University of St.Petersburg (1988) and the PhD from the Ioffe Institute (1994), both in physics.
Dr. Vlasov has published over 60 highly cited journal papers, filed over a dozen of US patents, and delivered more than 100 invited and plenary talks in the area of nanophotonic structures. He served on numerous organizing committees of conferences on nanophotonics under OSA, IEEE, LEOS, APS, MRS, etc. Dr. Vlasov was elected a Fellow of both the OSA and the APS, as well as a Senior Member of the IEEE. He was awarded the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award from IBM and the SciAm50 award from the Scientific American journal. Dr. Vlasov is also serving as an adjunct professor at the Columbia University's Department of Electrical Engineering.
Solomon Assefa
Dr. Solomon Assefa is a Research Staff Member at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He joined the IBM Research Division in 2004 to explore MRAM integration and scaling, MTJ spin-torque memory devices, and the fabrication and characterization of photonic-crystal devices. His current research focuses on integration of Si photonics with CMOS for interconnect in multi-core processors, slow-light engineering for buffering application, compact and efficient photo-detectors, and exploration of novel active photonic devices.
Dr.Assefa received a B.S. degree in physics, as well as B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) from MIT in 2001. He received a Ph.D. degree from MIT in June 2004 for his research on novel passive and active photonic-crystal devices on III–V and Si-based platforms. Dr. Solomon Assefa was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
William M. J. Green
Dr. William Green is a Research Staff Member at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. His current research activities encompass the design of nanophotonic waveguide and photonic crystal based electrooptic devices for low-power optical switching and high-speed modulation, within on-chip optical networks.
He joined IBM Research in 2005 first as a Visiting Scientist (cross-appointed with the University of New Orleans), studying the optical properties of self-assembled binary nanoparticle superlattices. In 2006 he joined Silicon Nanophotonics group as a Postdoctoral Scientist.
Will was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in June of 2005, for his work on III-V semiconductor optical modulators and annular Bragg resonators. He has also been awarded a B.Sc. in Engineering Physics from the University of Alberta, Canada.
Joris van Campenhout
Dr. Joris Van Campenhout joined Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY in September 2007 as a Postdoctoral Scientist. He is working on electro-optic and thermo-optic devices for low-power switching in on-chip optical networks.
He received a Masters degree in Engineering Physics from Ghent University in 2002. In 2007, he was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the same institution, for his work on electrically injected micro-disk lasers on a heterogeneous InP-Si platform.
Former team members
Fengnian Xia
Dr. Fengnian Xia was a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Silicon Nanophotonics group in 2005-2007. He was developing micro-ring resonators, photonic crystals, and high bandwidth waveguide photodiodes on SOI substrate.
He received the B.Eng. degree (with honors) in electronics engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1998 and M.A and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis is about monolithic integration of light guiding, generation and detection components on III-V substrate.
He is a member of IEEE and OSA. He authored and coauthored thirteen journal papers and many international conference presentations. He was granted one US patent and has several patents pending.
In 2007 Dr.Xia , now as a regular IBM employer in Physical Sciences Department, switched to work on carbon nanotube photonics.
Eric Dulkeith
Dr. Eric Dulkeith was a Postdoctoral Scientist with IBM TJ Watson Research Center in 2004-2006. He was engaged in the characterization of SOI-type two-dimensional photonic crystals and waveguides.
He received his B.S. and M.S degrees in Physics from the University of Munich, Germany, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. His field of research was to investigate collective proton motions in protein layers by using THz spectroscopy.
In 2000, he joined the Photonics and Optoelectronics Group of Prof. J. Feldmann at the University of Munich and obtained his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in 2004 on the optical properties of hybrid systems consisting of metal nanoparticles and fluorescent molecules. In parallel to his thesis he was working on II-VI semiconductor nanoparticles systems.
Eric is currently working at Detecon, Telecommunications Business and Strategy.
Lidija Sekaric
Dr. Lidija Sekaric is a Research Staff Member in Nanostructures and Exploratory Devices group in Silicon Technology. Her research interests lie in the area of nanofabrication of microphotonic circuits and CMOS devices alike. Most recently she developed hybrid optical and electon beam lithography to build world's smallest SRAM cell.
She has a Ph. D. from Cornell Univeristy (2003) in Applied Physics where she studied nanomechanical resonant structures (NEMS) and built world's smallest playable nanoguitar.
Sharee J. McNab
Dr. Sharee McNab has been a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 2001-2005. She was working in the field of silicon based micro-photonics and fabrication of exploratory CMOS at the scaling limits.
Dr.McNab graduated with a B.E. (Hons) degree from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1994 and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering also from the University of Canterbury in 2001. Her thesis was entitled “Evanescent Near-Field Optical Lithography –Overcoming the Diffraction Limit”. Between her undergraduate and graduate degrees she was employed as a software engineer at The Technology Partnership in Cambridge in the UK.
She is currently back in her alma mater University of Canterbury working as a visiting professor.
Martin O'Boyle
Martin O'Boyle is an Electrical Engineer in Physical Sciences Department with over 23 years of employment history at IBM. During these years he has been involved in a number of projects including fiber optic development for high end servers, scanning atomic force microscopy, in situ optical sensors development for manufacturing and experimentation, test/measurement equipment automation, and experimental evaluation of photonic structures. He received his Master of Science from the University of Delaware (1982) in Electrical Engineering.