News

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.

Prof. Lawrence Zeigler's work is highlighted in the Sept. 21 issue of C&EN

To read the article from the September 21, 2009 C&EN Magazine, click here.

Chemical & Engineering News is a weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society. C&EN editors and reporters based in Europe, the U.S., and Asia cover science and technology, business and industry, government and policy, education, and employment aspects of the chemistry field. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/

Prof. Luca Dal Negro Receives NSF Career Award

Published: July 16th, 2009
Luca Dal Negro

Prof. Luca Dal Negro

ECE Professor Luca Dal Negro received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in support of his project Combined Light and Carrier Localization in High-refractive Index Silicon Nanocrystal Structures: a Novel Approach for Si-based Lasers. The grant is awarded to junior university faculty “who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.” Professor Dal Negro is the 14th ECE faculty member to receive this award.

Project Summary:

This Faculty Early Career Development project aims to advance nanophotonics by developing a new class of light emitting devices exploiting aperiodic media.

Intellectual Merit:
This Faculty Early Career Development project aims to advance nanophotonics by developing a new class of light emitting devices that leverage Anderson light localization in deterministic aperiodic media for enhancing radiative transitions in silicon nanostructures. Differently from conventional photonic crystals approaches, the proposed research allows broadband engineering of density of states fluctuations, radiation patterns and localized fields in photonic-plasmonic nanostructures, enabling unprecedented control and enhancement of radiative processes on the nanoscale. The active material will consist of Er ions embedded in Si nitride superlattice structures. This material provides efficient excitation of Er resulting in 1.54ìm emission, which will couple with localized modes in aperiodic metal-dielectric arrays. This project explores for first time Anderson light localization in the context of on-chip light emission, and will result in the demonstration of photonic-plasmonic light-emitters susceptible of optical and electrical excitation.

Broader impact:
The successful demonstration of Si-based emitters and lasers will extend the reach of optical technologies into diverse fields, enabling low-cost applications of integrated optics in communication, processing, interconnects and optical biosensing. The establishment of this program at Boston University will contribute to a substantial education and outreach plan with the development of new courses for graduate (Nanophotonics) and undergraduate students (Science of Light), international symposia and short courses on Nanophotonics open to the general public and freely accessible online. These initiatives, combined with the largely interdisciplinary character of the proposed effort, will attract many young scientists to the exploding new fields of nanophotonics, plasmonics and light-localization in complex media.

Prof. Roberto Paiella awarded promotion and tenure

ECE Professor Roberto Paiella was recently promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and awarded full tenure status by Boston University’s Board of Trustees.

President Brown congratulated Prof. Paiella, writing, “In granting you promotion and tenure, the Trustees have recognized your contributions to the academic excellence of Boston University. I am grateful for those contributions, and I hope your association with the University remains personally and professionally rewarding.”

Prof. Paiella, who received his PhD from California Institute of Technology in 1998, is an IEEE senior member. In 2008, he won the BU Office of Technology Development Ignition Award. This year, he was awarded a BU College of Engineering Dean’s Catalyst award. His research interests include optical technologies for information processing; photonic devices based on semiconductor quantum structures, including group-III nitride quantum wells; nanoscale photonic devices and circuits; and ultrafast optics.

Summer 2009 RET Program

This summer the Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) helped support two high school science teachers under the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Program. RET is a supplement to the Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program in Photonics, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with additional support from the BU College of Engineering and the Photonics Center.

Elizabeth Hansen (Boston Public Schools) and Richard Newton (Braintree Public Schools) were the participants in this year’s 6-week summer experience. They worked in the Center’s labs with BUPC faculty on research and lesson plans for their classrooms. Hansen, with Professor Altug, developed an “Introduction to the Nanoworld” lesson plan. This plan includes 4 mini-lessons and experiments that can be performed in a high school physics classroom. Newton, with Professor Bifano, developed a “Demonstration of PC Adaptive Optics.” This demonstration, meant for astronomy and biology high school students, highlights the use of a PC based control system with Microelectromechanical (MEMS) deformable mirrors.

Hansen and Newton received a stipend from NSF and a small lab allowance for summer research items. The Photonics Center contributed $500 each for expenses related to their bringing their lessons back to their schools in the coming academic year.

In an added collaboration, Northeastern University along with Gordon CenSSIS hosted a similar summer RET program and allowed Hansen and Newton to join in on weekly lesson planning and pedagogical discussions for the RET.

Professor Ruane from the BUPC, along with Cynthia Brossman, Director of the BU Learning Resource Network, organized the RET Program. Professor Ruane also supervised two community college instructors who worked in the CenSSIS High Tech Tools and Toys Lab. The CenSSIS RET supported these instructors.

Professor Ruane and Dr. Brossman will be proposing a larger RET site for summer 2010 in the upcoming fall proposal round at NSF.

Director Bifano Wins Bepi Colombo Award

On Saturday, February 14, 2009, Boston University Photonics Center Director Dr. Thomas Bifano was awarded the Bepi Colombo Prize. The Bepi Colombo Prize was founded to honor the memory of Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, a fundamental figure in celestial mechanics, space science and technology development. The Bepi Prize is awarded biannually to researchers for outstanding achievements in research and technology transfer.

Five finalists were selected from an international pool of applicants and asked to prepare a ten page description of their research and technology transfer activities, and to present a summary of their work in a public forum at the Aula Magna 'Galileo Galilei' at the Palazzo del Bo in the heart of Padova.

The jury was composed of leaders from the European space science and astronomy community, chaired by Roger-Maurice Bonnet, Executive Director of the International Space Science Institute. They evaluated the finalists’ achievements in research, education and technology transfer. This year’s criteria included:
* Innovative character
* Potential for new discoveries
* Impact on knowledge and education
* Quality of presentation
* Match with Bepi Colombo’s achievements
* Potential in the medical and defense domain

The jury awarded the 2009 prize to Dr. Thomas Bifano for his work in “micro-deformable mirrors for astronomical telescopes.

Thomas Bifano is the Director of the Boston University Photonic Center. Dr. Bifano is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. His research focuses on the development and use of microelectro mechanical systems (MEMS) in optical applications. He is also a member of the Boston University Center for Space Physics and the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation. Dr. Bifano cofounded Boston Micromachines Corporation, a business leader in the production of deformable mirrors for applications in astronomy, defense and bio-imaging.