Welcome to the Youngblood Photonics Lab at Pitt

Our research combines unique optoelectronic materials with scalable photonic circuits to create new platforms for low-latency machine learning, reconfigurable photonic devices, and precision biosensing. Key to our work is a fundamental understanding of light-matter interaction at the nanoscale and use of advanced nanofabrication techniques to address major challenges facing these disciplines. The following areas of research in our group are: 1) Programmable Photonic Devices and Architectures for Machine Learning; 2) Waveguide-Integrated Circuits for Biosensing; and 3) Waveguide-Integrated 2D Materials for High Performance Optoelectronics.

News:

Nic's article published in ACS Photonics

Posted on September 28, 2023

Group member Nicholas Nobile’s article entitled “Time-Resolved Temperature Mapping Leveraging the Strong Thermo-Optic Effect in Phase-Change Materials” is published in ACS Photonics! This work demonstrates a method to experimentally validate dynamic thermal simulations of electrically-switched GST pixels. Congratulations, Nic!
Tags: phase change materials publications

YPL partners with Accipiter Systems to design high throughput optical AI accelerators

Posted on December 20, 2022

We are excited to announce the start of a collaborative DoD project with Accipiter Systems. Processing information in the photonic analog domain can enable high computational throughput through multi-dimensional parallelization in space, time, and frequency. In this two-year project, we will work with Accipiter to develop a modular photonic computing... [Read More]
Tags: electro-optic memory phase-change photonics hybrid photonic computing

YPL awarded collaborative grant with UMD to develop ultrafast and efficient phase-change photonic memory

Posted on September 29, 2022

We are excited to report the award of another collaborative NSF grant entitled, “Fast and efficient phase-change photonics using low-dimensional materials.” We will be working with our good friend Prof. Carlos Rios (UMD) who is leading this project and is a pioneer in optical phase-change materials. Our groups will be... [Read More]
Tags: electro-optic memory phase-change photonics hybrid photonic computing

YPL awarded collaborative grant with UMN for trapping and sorting viruses

Posted on September 7, 2022

Our collaborative proposal entitled, “Waveguide-Integrated Graphene Nano-tweezERs (WIGNER) for rapid sorting and analysis of nanovesicles and viruses” has been funded by NSF! Our lab will be working with co-PI Sang-Hyun Oh (UMN), an expert in trapping and sensing at the nanoscale, to develop a fully integrated optical platform for rapid... [Read More]
Tags: biosensing integrated photonics 2D materials

YPL receives grant for efficient and scalable photonic processors

Posted on March 15, 2022

Our Pitt Momentum Fund proposal entitled, “Highly Scalable and Efficient Deep Learning Accelerator Enabled by 3D Photonic Integration” has been generously funded by Pitt with additional matching financial support from the ECE department for nanofabrication (link to project page). Our lab will fabricate and demonstrate a hybrid photonic-electronic computing prototype... [Read More]
Tags: hybrid photonic computing artificial intelligence

Funding Sources:

Our lab acknowledges generous funding support provided by: