Events

Recollections of a Former Govind Agrawal Student

Dr. Nicholas G. Usechak, Principal Electronics Engineer, Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base, Program Manager, AIM Photonics

Presented in person in Goergen 101 and on Zoom

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Abstract

This talk will provide an overview of Professor Agawal’s group in the early 2000’s and how the experience of being a graduate student at the Institute of Optics and a member of Professor Agrawal’s group helped me develop as a researcher and set me up for success.  If time permits an overview of work involving injection-locked semiconductor lasers will be presented.

Biography

Dr. Usechak received BS degrees with high honors in both electrical engineering and engineering physics from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, in 2000.  In 2003 he received an M.S. degree and in 2006 a PhD both in optical engineering from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester NY where his dissertation focused on experimental work, numerical modeling, and the theory of FM mode-locked fiber lasers.

He worked at Trumpf Photonics in Cranbury, NJ as a Senior Engineer for a year following graduation characterizing high-power semiconductor laser arrays, automating experiments, and modeling the thermal effects of solder interfaces using transient temperature-extraction experiments to ground those models.  After Trumpf he joined the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base where he is currently employed as a Principal Electronics Engineer. In addition to his research activities at AFRL, where he runs the Integrated Photonic Circuits group and the Ultrafast Photonics Devices and Research Laboratory, Dr. Usechak also serves as the Program Manager for AIM Photonics and supports DARPA on a number of programs.

At Lehigh he was a Presidential Scholar during the academic year 1999-2000.  At the University of Rochester, he conducted his experimental work in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics where he was a Frank J. Horton Fellow.  His research interests include integrated photonic devices and systems, nonlinear optics, fiber lasers, semiconductor lasers, ultrafast optics, high-speed test and measurement, high-power semiconductor lasers, mode-locked lasers, parametric processes, optical clock generation, novel gain media, diverse waveform generation, partial differential equations, delay differential equations, and numerical modeling.

Dr. Usechak is a member of the OSA, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and a Senior Member of the IEEE.