AIM Summer Academy on Integrated Photonics Takes Place July 23-27 at MIT

Next week, more than 60 women and men from around the world will gather in Cambridge, Mass., for a week of intensive short courses on integrated photonics.

The AIM Summer Academy, which runs from July 23 to 27 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is an annual one-week intensive program that introduces students, educators, and industry professionals to the science, technology, and tools necessary to manufacture photonic integrated circuits (PICs) using the methodology of semiconductor chip foundries.

AIM Summer Academy 2017 attendees. Courtesy of Denis Paiste, Materials Processing Center, MIT.

Students ranging from beginners at the senior undergraduate level to faculty interested in starting an Integrated Photonics track at their schools will acquire a core competency in photonic device design, PIC layout, and PIC manufacturing principles through intensive courses in materials, devices, EPDA software training, as well as in integrated photonic circuit design, chip fabrication, packaging, testing, and system applications.

This year, attendees can choose from one of two tracks: PIC Fundamentals or Applied PIC Design Education. Courses are being taught by instructors from MIT, Dartmouth College, University of Rochester, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“The class learns uniquely with two parallel, project-based, integrated photonics tracks, and all students collaborate at the end of each day to solve specific, application design challenges. The student enthusiasm and diversity of thought enrich learning and contribute novel solutions to the new scaling platform for information technology," said professor and AIM Photonics executive Lionel Kimerling.

Registration in either education track enrolls attendees to participate in a week-long design project to evaluate and propose a conceptual design for an application-specific PIC in datacom, RF signal processing, sensing, or lidar imaging.

The AIM Photonics Summer Academy introduces attendees to the prerequisite skill set needed to complete AIM’s online training course, to be offered in the fall 2018 semester, for design submissions to the Multi-Project Wafer prototype runs at the AIM Photonics Institute’s fabrication facility. It also provides an accelerated introduction to working directly with the most advanced state-of-the-art 300-mm semiconductor processing research fab in the world, operated by the AIM Photonics Institute and located at SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Registration for this year’s program is closed, but for more information about the program, you can contact Julie Diop, program manager for the AIM Photonics Academy Program at MIT, at jdiop@mit.edu.