ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Maliheh Azimi Roueini

ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Maliheh Azimi Roueini

Title: Dielectric Metasurface Photodetectors for Quantitative Phase-Contrast Imaging

Presenter: Maliheh Azimi Roueini

Advisor: Professor Roberto Paiella

Chair: Professor Lei Tian

Committee: Professor Roberto Paiella, Professor Lei Tian, Professor Tianyu Wang, Professor David Lake

Google Scholar Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9VUbF3oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Abstract: With the rapid advancement of imaging technologies, modern imaging systems are increasingly expected to capture multiple properties of light beyond intensity alone, including its angle of incidence, polarization, wavelength, and phase. Conventional approaches typically rely on bulky optical components or multiple sequential measurements, limiting system compactness, functionality, and scalability. Recent advances in dielectric metasurfaces provide a promising alternative by enabling precise manipulation of light with ultrathin arrays of subwavelength nanostructures that can be directly integrated with semiconductor imaging devices. This research focuses on the design, fabrication, and experimental characterization of dielectric metasurface-integrated CMOS image sensors capable of simultaneously encoding multiple properties of incident light into a single captured image. The proposed devices are designed and optimized using full-wave electromagnetic simulations, fabricated through advanced nanofabrication techniques, and experimentally characterized to validate their optical performance. By combining nanophotonic device engineering with computational imaging, this work aims to establish a compact, highly integrated imaging platform that extends the functionality of conventional image sensors while reducing reliance on bulky optical assemblies. The proposed approach has the potential to enable next-generation imaging systems for applications in machine vision, biomedical imaging, optical metrology, and integrated photonic sensing.