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:

Youngblood Photonics Lab awarded NSF grant to improve phase-change device endurance

Nathan’s second NSF proposal entitled, “High-endurance phase-change devices for electrically reconfigurable optical systems” was funded! Our lab will be working in collaboration with co-PI Feng Xiong at Pitt to investigate the mechanisms limiting the endurance and cyclability of electrically-controlled, phase-change photonic memory. Read Pitt’s press release here. Link to NSF... [Read More]

Vivswan joins the lab!

The lab welcomes Vivswan Shah to Pitt! Vivswan is a new PhD student starting this fall who graduated from Illinois College with a double major in Physics and Computer Science. He will be developing waveguide-integrated 2D optoelectronic memory using MoTe2 and will use his coding chops to automate experiments in... [Read More]

Youngblood Photonics Lab wins an NSF grant to explore 2D PCMs

Our proposal on “Elucidating Structural Transformations in MoTe2 for Efficient Optoelectronic Memory” in collaboration with Feng Xiong from Pitt was funded! We are excited to better understand the mechanism for phase transition in the 2D material MoTe2 using optical and electrical techinques. See the following technical abstract for more information:... [Read More]

Funding Sources:

Our lab acknowledges generous funding support provided by: