Simarjeet Saini

Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research interests: nanophotonic devices; optoelectronics components for datacom and telecom

Biography

Professor Simarjeet Saini joined University of Waterloo in September 2007. He did his B.Tech. (Hons.) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1996 and his Doctorate from University of Maryland, College Park in 2001 under the guidance of Professor Mario Dagenais. His Ph.D. thesis was on the design and development of a new platform technology for monolithic integration of photonic devices called Passive Active Resonant Coupler (PARC).

The resulting technology led to the foundation of a start-up company Covega Corporation in Jessup, MD. Saini worked as the Lead Optoelectronics Device Engineer at Covega from Dec. 2000- Oct. 2004 and as Lead Applications Engineer from Oct. 2005-Sept. 2007. He lead the design and development of Covega’s single angled facet chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers and high power lasers. In August 2004, Saini co-founded a startup company called Altanet Communications which worked on ethernet based metro area networks with less than 5 ms restoration time using intelligence in the optical domain. He also served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow from Oct. 2004-Sept. 2005 in Professor Dagenais’ lab at the University of Maryland where he worked on biochemical sensors and optical packet routing.

Saini has been granted 5 US patents and has 5 more in various stages of application. 3 of the patents have already been commercialized. He has co-authored over 20 Journal papers and 40 conference presentations. He was granted the US Army Lab Research Fellowship from 1996-1998, a Distinguished Graduate Research Assistantship from University of Maryland from 1999-2000, and a SPIE Educational Scholarship in 1999. Besides that he was a part of a team comprising of undergraduate students in Indian Institutes of Technology, Kharagpur which received Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Vincent Benedict Award in 1995 for building a smart library.

Education

PhD, University of Maryland, 2001
BTech, Indian Institute of Technology, 1996

Simarjeet Saini

Research

The Nanophotonics and Integrated Optoelectronics Group conducts research in nanophotonics devices, integrated optics, microwave photonics, biochemical optical sensors, and optical communication systems.

Research interests

Optoelectronics components for datacom and telecom
High speed optical networks
Tunable mid-IR lasers
Nanophotonics Chem-Bio Sensors
Microwave photonics

Publications

Recent publications include:

Lee, Sang-Mae; Jeong, Won-Taek; Kim, Kyung-Chun; Kim, Kyung-Jo; Oh, Mincheol; Saini, Simarjeet S.; Dagenais, Mario, “Optical characterization of refractive index sensors based on planar waveguide Fabry-Perot Bragg grating cavity”,Journal of Nanophotonics, Vol.7 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Walia, J.; Saini, S. S., “Enhanced Raman scattering from sub-wavelength silicon gratings”, Applied Physics Letters, Vol.103, No.16 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Raeis-Zadeh, S. M.; Jafarlou, S.; Wesolowski, M. J.; Daley, C. R.; Flannery, J. B.; Forrest, J.; Safavi-Naeini, S.; Saini, S. S., “Highly Enhanced Raman Scattering of Graphene using Plasmonic Nano-Structure”,Scientific Reports, Vol.3 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, Mohammadreza; Raeis-Zadeh, S. Mohsen; Amarloo, Hadi; Abedzadeh, Navid; Safavi-Naeini, Safieddin; Saini, Simarjeet Singh, “Colorimetric sensors using nano-patch surface plasmon resonators”, Nanotechnology, Vol.24, No.35 (2013)
Buin, Andrei; Verma, Amit; Saini, Simarjeet, “Optoelectronic response calculations in the framework of k.p coupled to non-equilibrium Green's functions for one-dimensional systems in the ballistic limit”, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol.114, No.3 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Patchett, S.; Sun, J.; O, N.; Saini, S. S., “Diameter dependence of polarization resolved reflectance from vertical silicon nanowire arrays: Evidence of tunable absorption”, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol.114, No.2 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Adachi, M. M.; Walia, J.; Karim, K. S.; Saini, S. S., “Raman spectroscopy of core/shell silicon nanowires grown on different substrates”, Physica Status Solidi A – Applications and Materials Science, Vol.210, No.2, pp373-377 (2013)
Patchett, Susan; Khorasaninejad, Mohammadreza; Nixon, O.; Saini, Simarjeet S., “Effective index approximation for ordered silicon nanowire arrays”, Journal of the Optical Society of American B – Optical Physics, Vol.30, No.2, pp306-313 (2013)
Lee, Sang-Mae; Jeong, Won-Taek; Kim, Kyung-Chun; Kim, Kyung-Jo; Oh, Mincheol; Chung, Thomas; Saini, Simarjeet S.; Dagenais, Mario; “Optical characterization of refractive index sensors based on planar waveguide Fabry-Perot Bragg grating cavity”, Eds. Kang, SW; Park, SH; Lee, LP; Song, KB; Choi, YH, Nano-Bio Sensing, Imaging, and Spectroscopy, Vol.8879 (2013)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Patchett, S.; Sun, J.; O, N.; Saini, S. S., “Polarization-resolved reflections in ordered and bunched silicon nanowire arrays”, Journal of the Optical Society of America B – Optical Physics, Vol.29, No.11, pp3063-3068 (2012)
Galle, Michael A.; Saini, Simarjeet S.; Mohammed, Waleed S.; Qian, Li, “Virtual reference interferometry: theory and experiment’, Journal of the Optical Society of America B – Optical Physics, Vol.29, No.11, pp.3201-3210 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Dhindsa, N.; Walia, J.; Patchett, S.; Saini, S. S., “Highly enhanced Raman scattering from coupled vertical silicon nanowire arrays”, Applied Physics Letters, Vol.101, No.17 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Swillam, M. A.; Pillai, K.; Saini, S. S., “Silicon nanowire arrays with enhanced optical properties”,Optics Letters, Vol.37, No.20, pp.4194-4196 (2012)
Kumar, Sunil; Khorasaninejad, M.; Adachi, M. M.; Karim, K. S.; Saini, S. S.; Sood, A. K., “Probing ultrafast carrier dynamics, nonlinear absorption and refraction in core-shell silicon nanowires”, Pramana – Journal of Physics, Vol.79, No.3, pp471-481 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Abedzadeh, N.; Walia, J.; Patchett, S.; Saini, S. S., “Color Matrix Refractive Index Sensors Using Coupled Vertical Silicon Nanowire Arrays”, Nano Letters, Vol.12, No.8, pp4228-4234 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Abedzadeh, N.; Sun, J.; Hilfiker, J. N.; Saini, S. S., “Polarization resolved reflection from ordered vertical silicon nanowire arrays”, Optics Letters, Vol.37, No.14, pp2961-2963 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Walia, J.; Saini, S. S., “Enhanced first-order Raman scattering from arrays of vertical silicon nanowires”, Nanotechnology, Vol.23, No.27 (2012)
Singh, Prashant Kumar; Chatterjee, Gourab; Lad, Amit D.; Adak, Amitava; Ahmed, Saima; Khorasaninejad, M.; Adachi, M. M.; Karim, K. S.; Saini, S. S.; Sood, A. K.; Kumar, G. Ravindra, “Efficient generation and guiding of megaampere relativistic electron current by silicon nanowires”, Applied Physics Letters, Vol.100, No.24 (2012)
Galle, Michael A.; Saini, Simarjeet S.; Mohammed, Waleed S.; Qian, Li, “Chromatic dispersion measurements using a virtually referenced interferometer”, Optics Letters, Vol.37, No.10, pp1598-1600 (2012)
Lee, Sang-Mae; Jeong, Myung-Yung; Saini, Simarjeet S., “Etched-Core Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors Integrated With Microfluidic Channels”, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol.30, No.8, pp1025-1031 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, Mohammadreza; Abedzadeh, Navid; Jawanda, Ajayinder Singh; Nixon, O.; Anantram, M. P.; Saini, Simarjeet Singh, “Bunching characteristics of silicon nanowire arrays”, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol.111, No.4 (2012)
Ryu, Geunmin; Chryssis, Athanasios N.; Amirloo, Jeyran; Saini, Simarjeet; Towner, Fred J.; Dagenais, Mario, “Gain and Losses and Room-Temperature Operation in Interband Cascade Lasers”, IEEE Photonics Journal, Vol.4, No.1, pp133-142 (2012)
Amirloo, Jeyran; Towner, Fred J.; Saini, Simarjeet; Dagenais, Mario, “Carrier Leakage in Interband Cascade Lasers”, 23^rdIEEE International Semiconductor Laser Conference (ISLC), (2012)
Ryu, Geunmin; Amirloo, Jeyran; Saini, Simarjeet; Towner, Fred; Dagenais, Mario, “62 mW Output Power, Room-Temperature Operation, CW Interband Cascade Laser”, 2012 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Adachi, M. M.; Walia, J.; Karim, K. S.; Saini, S. S., “Raman Spectrum of Core-Shell Silicon Nanowires on Different Substrates”, 2012 International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN), pp23-24 (2012)
Khorasaninjead, M.; Abedzadeh, N.; Walia, J.; Saini, S. S., “Colorful Silicon Nanowire Arrays for Sensing”, 2012 International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN), pp174-175 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Saini, S. S., “Polarization Resolved Reflections from Ordered and Bunched Silicon Nanowire Arrays”, 2012 International Conference on Optical MEMS and Nanophotonics (OMN), pp178-179 (2012)
Khorasaninejad, Mohammadreza; Clarke, Nigel; Anantram, M. P.; Saini, Simarjeet Singh, “Optical bio-chemical sensors on SNOW ring resonators”, Optics Express, Vol.19, No.18, pp17575-17584 (2011)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Saini, S. S., “Bend Waveguides on Silicon Nanowire Optical Waveguide (SNOW)”, IEEE Photonics Journal, Vol.3, No.4, pp696-702 (2011)
Khorasaninejad, Mohammadreza; Saini, Simarjeet Singh, “Amine terminated spherical aggregates of alumina through self-assembly using organosilanes”, Journal of Nanophotonics, Vol.5 (2011)
Khorasaninejad, M.; Saini, S. S., “All-optical logic gate in silicon nanowire optical waveguides”, IET Circuits Devices & Systems, Vol.5, No.2, pp115-122 (2011)
Roudsari, Anita Fadavi; Saini, Simarjeet S.; Nixon, O.; Anantram, M. P., “High-Gain Multiple-Gate Photodetector With Nanowires in the Channel”, IEEE Electron Device Letters, Vol.32, No.3, pp357-359 (2011)