INTERN SPOTLIGHT: ERIKA COLIN-ULLOA
While the prospect of further expanding her professional network by collaborating with silicon photonics industry experts was an appealing option for WPI PhD student Erika Colin-Ulloa, it was ultimately the opportunity to be a true, hands-on contributor to the advancement of technology itself that convinced her to apply for AIM Photonics’ summer internship program.
“AIM Photonics is a leading institute in the integrated photonics field, and it was attractive for me to have the chance to be at the forefront of scientific developments and to contribute to that,” Colin-Ulloa said. “I’m familiar with photonics, but my research is more basic science-related, so I was really excited to be part of a project that will be part of the industry’s technological advancement.”
Colin-Ulloa’s internship involved creating a laser linewidth measurement setup that is needed for checking the health of heterogeneously integrated lasers and semiconductor amplifiers after a 2.5D bonding processes.
“It is imperative that we are able to develop robust attachment processes for lasers to 300 mm silicon wafers that do not degrade laser linewidth or relative intensity noise (RIN),” said AIM Photonics Senior Electro-optics Engineer Dr. Lewis Carpenter, who served as Colin-Ulloa’s mentor in the internship program.
“My project was about building and automating a setup for the characterization of on-chip lasers, which can also be used for other types of commercial laser systems,” Colin-Ulloa said. “The setup measures linewidth and RIN, which are key parameters for developing silicon photonic chips with attached lasers that can propagate long distances without losing their stability or properties, which is of interest in coherent telecommunications, for example.”
In addition to gaining valuable experience in the field of integrated photonics, Colin-Ulloa added that the new skills she developed during her project will be useful for her own PhD research.
“I liked how AIM photonics combines research and industry very well, and my goals were impacted by this internship. I learned a lot about integrated photonics during the summer and actually I got some ideas that I would like to apply in my own research,” she said.
Colin-Ulloa will graduate next year and is still undecided about pursuing an academic or industry career, but believes that integrated photonics will have a significant impact on our future.
“Combining miniaturization and photons in a device holds a promise for enabling faster data processing, faster communication, and high precision that will impact a broad spectrum of fields ranging from telecommunications to quantum photonics, quantum computing, electronics, biophotonics, just to mention some,” she said.
You can find out more about Erika Colin-Ulloa on her LinkedIn profile.
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Students Explore Integrated Photonics through Summer Internships at AIM Photonics