Teaching
Optical Manipulation for Biology & Colloidal Assembly (Spring 2019)
Optical trapping, which was recently recognized with a 2018 Physics Nobel Prize has emerged as a powerful technique for trapping and manipulating biological objects and for directed assembly of nanomaterial building blocks for future nanomanufacturing technologies. This course will cover the fundamental concepts and applications of optical trapping force as well as lab-on-a-chip devices for optical trapping utilizing photonic crystal waveguides, plasmonic nanoantennas and resonant dielectrics. The course will also cover non-optical techniques for manipulation of biological cells including thermophoresis, acoustophoresis, magnetophoresis and dielectrophoresis. In addition to applications in biology, the utilization of these techniques for nanomanufacturing including bottom-up colloidal assembly and patterning of 2-D materials will also be covered.
Principles and Models of Semiconductor Devices (Fall 2018)
Micro & Nanoscale Optofluidics (Spring 2018)
The field of Optofluidics, the synergistic hybrid of optics and microfluidics, has generated significant interest for versatile lab-on-a-chip applications including sensing, nanoparticle manipulation and sorting, optofluidic microscopes and adaptive lenses. The laminar nature of microfluidic flows precludes convective mixing, which has provided the means to realize reconfigurable photonic devices with functionalities defined by the properties of the surrounding fluid medium. In addition, optofluidics has also been explored for lab-on-chip devices where light is used to manipulate fluid, suspended particles or target analytes. This course presents a summary of fundamental concepts and emerging device applications that are enabled by Optofluidics. Topics will include hybrid approaches for micro and nanoparticle assembly with plasmonic and dielectric metasurfaces, bioinspired robotics, optofluidic microscopes, nanobiosensing, and thermoplasmonics.
Students who take the course will learn cross-disciplinary concepts and become better equipped to identify and pursue research activities across multiple disciplines. These unique skill sets are useful towards addressing important grand challenges facing our world in the area of energy, water, and health.