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:

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

Reconfigurable smart windows using phase-change materials

Posted on January 5, 2022

Our paper entitled, “Reconfigurable Low-Emissivity Optical Coating Using Ultrathin Phase Change Materials,” has been published in ACS Photonics! Unlike most smart window technology which either transmits or blocks both visible and infrared light from the sun, we modulate our window’s properties only in the infrared. This allows us to leave... [Read More]
Tags: green technology phase-change materials smart window

Nic graduates with honors!

Posted on December 17, 2021

Congratulations to Nicholas Nobile who completed his ECE degree with highest honors! Nic will be starting his PhD in our group this spring with a focus on developing reliable methods to electrically control optical PCMs. Well done and welcome to the group, Nic!
Tags: undergraduate students

Nanocalligraphy paper combines art with advanced nanolithography

Posted on October 26, 2021

Congratulations to Nikolaos Farmakidis from the Advanced Nanoscale Engineering group at Oxford for his new paper entitled, “Exploiting rotational asymmetry for sub-50 nm mechanical nanocalligraphy.” This novel approach to nanolithography enabled Nik and co-lead author Jacob Swett to create complex patterns at the nanoscale inspired by the artwork of calligraphy... [Read More]
Tags: nanocalligraphy nanofabrication art

Youngblood Photonics Lab awarded collaborative NSF grant for ultra-fast machine learning

Posted on July 2, 2021

Our collaborative proposal entitled, “A Hybrid Co-processing Unit (HCU) using Phase-change Photonics in CMOS for Large-scale and Ultra-fast Machine Learning Acceleration” has been funded by NSF! Our lab will be collaborating with lead PI Sajjad Moazeni (UW) and co-PIs Mo Li (UW) and Lei Jiang (IU) to develop hybrid electronic-photonic... [Read More]
Tags: electro-optic memory phase-change photonics hybrid photonic computing

Funding Sources:

Our lab acknowledges generous funding support provided by: