Laboratories/2017–2024

Photonics Core Technology Platform Laboratory

NYU Abu Dhabi · Core Technology Platforms

CHALLENGE

High-speed optical and RF research required an integrated characterization facility from faculty concept through sustained shared operation.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Co-developed the equipment architecture, commissioned the facility, and managed seven years of operation and expansion supporting photonics experiments.

OUTCOME

Sustained a shared characterization facility over seven years, with my technical contributions explicitly acknowledged in six photonics papers from 2021 to 2024.

Facility overview

An integrated optical and RF characterization facility supporting photonics research at NYU Abu Dhabi. Working with Prof. Mahmoud Rasras, I translated research requirements into equipment plans and coordinated procurement, commissioning, and expansion. The facility combines high-speed signal generation and analysis, optical testing, microscopy, and spectral and polarization measurement, with lightwave component analysis to 67 GHz.

CONTRIBDesigned CONTRIBCommissioned CONTRIBOperated CONTRIBSupported CONTRIBSystem Integration

DOMAINPhotonics & Telecommunications

Facility Highlights

Developed the equipment architecture with Prof. Mahmoud Rasras: model-level capital plans and staged priority scenarios for a photonics/RF option set evaluated at ~AED 12.77M, backed by vendor benchmarking visits to research laboratories in France and Germany.
Coordinated installation and commissioning end to end — optical tables and Leica M205A microscopy, UPS-backed power, networked TCP/IP instrument control, Keysight BERT/AWG vendor training, Lightwave Component Analyzer calibration, and VSA software integration.
Designed and built an aerial bridge between the instrument rack and the main optical table during installation. Optical instruments stayed on the rack, off the table; the table was reserved for electrical equipment that had to sit close to the device under test.
Built a motion stage that carries the fully equipped microscope — optics, camera, and accessories — to within a few microns, so the silicon photonics device under test could stay fixed. Electrical probes and the fiber interface took hours to attach and align; moving the chip would have broken that setup. The first version used Aerotech stages. The later version used Thorlabs stages, with a LabVIEW interface and joystick control.
Worked with the full telecommunication and electronics set on this bench: lasers, optical and electrical power meters, polarizers, component analyzers, real-time and sampling oscilloscopes, arbitrary-waveform and signal generators, digitizers, a bit-error-ratio tester, optical and electrical spectrum analyzers, software-defined radio, E/O clock recovery, modulators, filters, optical and electrical amplifiers, antennas, transceivers, and a digital signal processor.
Those instruments are the measurement path in the papers that credit this laboratory. Tunable Keysight lasers (81600B sources in the O and C bands, and the 8164B lightwave system), N7744A and photodiode power meters, and fiber polarizers measured insertion loss and crosstalk of the dual-band two-mode multiplexer, with TE0 held 20 dB above TM0, and the laser-power sweeps on the InPSe microring that hold the resonance when source power changes. The plasmonic optical PUFs were checked on that same path for stability under power, temperature, and transverse-magnetic polarization. High-speed transmission used the bit-error-ratio tester, modulator, and amplifiers together: a Keysight M8045A pattern generator, a Thorlabs LN05S Mach–Zehnder modulator, an SHF S807C radio-frequency amplifier, and Thorlabs optical amplifiers put a 2³¹−1 pattern on a 1550 nm laser at 40 and 64 Gbit/s, and a Keysight Infiniium DCA-X 86100D sampling oscilloscope recorded the eyes after the mode multiplexer. The 60 Gbit/s diplexer paper is the same on-chip NRZ on-off-keying test, with open eyes at 1310 and 1550 nm. The waveguide InSe photodetector used an arbitrary waveform generator and a high-speed modulator for the sinusoid and the pseudorandom pattern, an optical spectrum analyzer for waveguide loss, an electrical spectrum analyzer for the radio-frequency response (3 dB at 85 MHz), an Agilent B1505A power-device analyzer for the current–voltage curves, and a high-speed oscilloscope for eyes up to 1 Gbit/s. The GaGeTe detectors were read under 1310 nm illumination for responsivity and with intensity-modulated light for a frequency response out to 100 MHz. Digitizers and the real-time oscilloscopes captured those waveforms. E/O clock recovery, filters, software-defined radio, antennas, transceivers, and the digital signal processor were the electrical timing, conditioning, and readout on that same bench, alongside the lightwave component analyzer calibrated to 67 GHz.
Managed lifecycle stewardship across seven years: troubleshooting, calibration, instrument restoration, laser safety and EHS responsibility, access governance, and a 2022–2023 expansion adding three optical tables — sequenced around critical PhD-defense measurements and praised by faculty as "meticulous and thorough".
Explicitly named in the acknowledgements of at least six peer-reviewed photonics journal papers (2021–2024) from Prof. Rasras’s group — Optics Express, Journal of Lightwave Technology, Advanced Photonics Research, and npj 2D Materials and Applications — for optical testing, instrumentation support, technical discussions, and experimental characterization in the Photonics Lab.
Broader research enablement: CTP characterization acknowledged in a 2019 Journal of Applied Physics paper, capstone projects faculty said "could not have been completed" without CTP support, and demonstrations for the NYUAD Provost and the UAE Space Agency.