Nickerson – Optica APC Student Paper Award

Nickerson received the student paper award for his combined abstract and talk in the 2023 Student Paper Competition at the 2023 Optica Advanced Photonics Congress (APC). The paper "Gallium Arsenide Optical Phased Array Beam Steering Photonic Integrated Circuit," was honored by the Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nanophotonics (IPR) meeting group.

The Optica APC is a broad-spectrum, in-depth event comprised of five topical meetings that primarily cover the latest advancements in optical materials, optical signal processing, optical communications and integrated optics. Optica's 2023 APC IPR was held on July 9 - 13, 2023 in Busan, Republic of Korea.

Nickerson's research is focused on integrated optical phased arrays operating at wavelengths near 1 µm. Using a gallium arsenide based photonic integrated circuit, a 16-channel optical phased array was recently demonstrated with 12 dB side lobe levels and near-1-GHz electro-optic response. This was the topic of his presentation at the 2023 Optica Advanced Photonics Congress, and the same work was recently published in Optics Express.

Michael is a PhD student in the ECE Department and is a member of ECE Professor Jonathan Klamkin's Integrated Photonics Laboratory (iPL). Prior to joining the group, he worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Washington, after which he spent several years at JILA in Boulder, Colorado. His interests are in integrated photonics for free-space optical communications and optical phased arrays.

"Gallium Arsenide Optical Phased Array Beam Steering Photonic Integrated Circuit"