Simarjeet Saini

Simarjeet Saini
Associate Professor, Pearl Sullivan IDEAs Clinic Director
Location: E5 4032
Phone: 519-888-4567 x35018

Biography

Simarjeet Saini is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He completed his doctorate at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2001 under the guidance of Professor Mario Dagenais. Professor Saini’s Ph.D. thesis was on 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 called Covega Corporation in Jessup, Maryland. Professor Saini worked as the Lead Optoelectronics Device Engineer at Covega, and later, as a Lead Applications Engineer. He led the design and development of Covega’s single angled facet chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers and high power lasers.

In August 2004, Professor Saini co-founded Altanet Communications, a start-up company that focused on ethernet based metro area networks with less than 5 ms restoration time using intelligence in the optical domain.

Professor Saini’s research interests include: optoelectronics components for datacom and telecom, high speed optical networks, tunable mid-IR lasers, nanophotonics chem-bio sensors, and microwave photonics. He holds 5 US patents and has 5 more in various stages of application, of which 3 have already been commercialized.

Research Interests

  • Monolithic Integration of photonics devices, Optoelectronics components for datacom and telecom, High speed optical networks, Tunable mid-IR lasers, Nanophotonics Chem-Bio Sensors, Microwave photonics, Antennas, Microwaves & Photonics, Water, Nanotechnology

Education

  • 2001, Doctorate Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, United States
  • 1996, Bachelor of Technology Electronics and Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Teaching*

  • ECE 106 - Electricity and Magnetism
    • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
  • ECE 375 - Electromagnetic Fields and Waves
    • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2024
  • ECE 672 - Optoelectronic Devices
    • Taught in 2023
  • NE 241 - Electromagnetism
    • Taught in 2023

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

Graduate studies