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Franklin Awards Symposium: Honoring Professor Naomi J. Halas – Rice University – Recipient of the 2025 Franklin Medal in Chemistry

Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology, Room 121 231 S 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

This symposium will feature cutting-edge contributions in plasmonics and nanonphonics research that are enabling advances in life sciences, energy sustainability, and information technology. Event Schedule 8:50 am:  Welcome 9:00 am: Prof. Rizia Bardhan, Iowa State University. 9:35 am: Prof. Stephan Link, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) 10:10 am: Break 10:30 am: Prof. Peter J. A. […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Multiferroic Resonators for Wireless Power Transfer and Magnetic Field Sensing in Biomedical Systems”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) composed of magnetostrictive and piezoelectric materials can translate information between the electrical and magnetic domains while exploiting mechanical resonance enhancement. Multiferroic MEMS devices such as these can be designed to perform magnetic field sensing and wireless power transfer (WPT) while maintaining device sizes on the order of 0.125 mm 2 . This […]

ESE Guest SEminar – “Dynamical control of tip-induced quantum light-matter interactions at the nanoscale”

Greenberg Lounge (Room 114), Skirkanich Hall 210 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

The controllable manipulation of bandgap, radiative emission, and energy transfer in low-dimensional quantum materials provides a versatile platform for a range of quantum photonic devices. Moreover, the understanding and precise regulation of nanoscale behaviors exhibited by excitonic quasiparticles, such as excitons and trions, in low-dimensional semiconductors are paramount for the development of highly efficient nano-excitonic […]

MSE Ph.D. Thesis: “Metasurfaces For Environmental Refractive Index Sensing: Design, Fabrication And Interrogation”

Towne 327 the Active Learning Classroom

Metasurfaces are artificial materials composed of sub-wavelength building blocks whose size, shape, periodicity and composition are tailored to engineer their optical response and achieve arbitrary control of their interactions with light. Their phase discontinuities or resonances are critically dependent upon the local dielectric or refractive index environment, thus making metasurfaces excellent candidates as refractive index […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Tunable Dielectric Nanocrystal Metasurfaces for Colorimetric Sensing”

Room 313, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Optical metasurfaces enable strong light–matter interactions, making them ideal platforms for high–figure-of-merit (FOM) sensing. When fabricated from colloidal nanocrystal dispersions, these metasurfaces offer unique advantages in fabrication flexibility, reconfigurability, and cost-effectiveness. However, conventional fabrication approaches often rely on toxic material systems. In this thesis, we enhance the FOM of titanium dioxide (TiO₂)-based dielectric metasurfaces by […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Statistical Limits and Efficient Algorithms for Learning-Enabled Control”

Amy Gutmann Hall, Room 414 3333 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States

As the adoption of large-scale learning for control continues to grow, developing sample-efficient algorithms has become critical. Yet, even in simple settings, algorithms achieving optimal sample complexity for specific problem instances often remain unknown. Motivated by this limitation, we discuss recent progress toward understanding sample-efficient methods in learning-enabled control. We first examine the statistical limits […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Towards General Microscopic Robots”

Towne 337

This defense presents my contributions towards general robotics at the microscopic scale. Namely, through the introduction of fully programmable, autonomous microscopic robots free to explore the microscopic world. The robots complete simple, but essential milestones for microscopic robots. The machines we build are small enough to experience the same physics as their biological counterparts, allowing […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Energy-efficient Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing Systems for the Next Generation of Optical Transceivers”

Towne 337

The rapid growth of data traffic in data centers and AI applications demands faster, more energy-efficient communication solutions to scale up parallel computing capabilities. This dissertation explores integrated photonic-electronic systems designed to significantly enhance data transfer rates and reduce energy consumption. By simultaneously using multiple wavelengths of light, these systems achieve data rates reaching terabit-per-second […]

ESE Guest Seminar: “On-Device Probabilistic AI: From Gaussian Transistors to Light-Driven Spike Encoding”

Room 221, Singh Center for Nanotechnology 3205 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Emerging edge AI systems call for device-level approaches that are inherently low-power, secure, and capable of managing uncertainty. In this talk, I will share our recent exploratory efforts toward realizing on-device probabilistic intelligence using custom-designed semiconductor devices. I will introduce Gaussian transistors that support analog Gaussian activation and probabilistic inference by harnessing device-level variability. These […]

ESE Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Novel van der Waals Chalcogenides for Sustainable Light Harvesting”

Raisler Lounge (Room 225), Towne Building 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

The global climate crisis demands a shift to renewable energy sources. Solar photovoltaics (PVs) are widely considered the most feasible renewable technology to meet global energy demands, and solar photo-electrocatalysis is a promising approach to decarbonize industrial chemical production. However, scaling solar energy harvesting technologies to meet energy demands must be done economically and sustainably, […]