Interdisciplinary Convergent Research and Education for Semiconductor Workforce | Accelerating Photonic Integration

Taste of Tech Seminar Series

04/18/2025

Lunch will be provided during the seminar

Time

11:45 AM – 1:00 PM (EST)

Taste of Tech Seminar Details

Talk 1: Interdisciplinary Convergent Research and Education for Semiconductor Workforce

Speaker: Ashok Kumar
Professor, University of South Florida

About the Speaker:

Ashok Kumar, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has served as the director of Nanotechnology Research and Education Center (NREC) and is also an affiliated faculty member of the Clean Energy Research Center (CERC). He holds ten patents and has published three textbooks, edited seven proceeding books, three invited review articles, and 12 book chapters and has presented approximately 315 papers in regional and national conferences including 55 invited talks. Dr. Kumar also acted as Cluster Director of the Alabama NASA EPSCoR Advanced Materials research program to supervise the state-wide research activities comprising of five major universities and six small colleges with two HBCUs.

His excellence as a researcher has been recognized by a number of honors, including ASM-IIM Visiting Lecture Award, Theodore and Venette Askounes Ashford Distinguished Scholar Award, USF Outstanding Faculty Research Achievement Award, USF President Faculty Excellence Award, NSF CAREER Development Award, National Research Council Twining Fellowship Award, and NSF and DOE EPSCoR Young Investigator Awards. He also received the Professor Honorario award from the Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia. Dr. Kumar is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Society of Metals (ASM), American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME) and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Abstract:

The NSF Research Traineeship Program (NRT) awarded funding to the University of South Florida (USF) for the development and implementation of a comprehensive and experiential learning-based education, research, training, and skills development program in semiconductor design, manufacturing, and packaging for graduate students. This talk will provide interdisciplinary semiconductor concepts and emerging technologies that will be integrated in existing courses with novel experiential lab training in Class 1000 cleanroom environment.  Students will be involved with industrial partners to define research problems using a convergence approach to design and develop application-driven semiconductor systems and devices. This program is innovatively designed such that the students on completion will gain essential competencies, namely, transdisciplinary knowledge, communication, teamwork, experimental & computational skills, informed decision making, entrepreneurship skills, project management, ethics, leadership, and safe and sustainable manufacturing. In summary, this presentation will provide on-going development and implementation of a new interdisciplinary curriculum, featuring novel courses in fundamentals of materials, processing, metrology, device fabrication with specific applications to semiconductor technology development.

---

Talk 2: Accelerating Photonic Integration: Enabling Cost-Effective and Flexible Optical Interfaces for Next-Generation Networks

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Eng. António Teixeira
PICadvanced

About the Speaker:

Antonio Teixeira – PICadvanced co-founder and CSTO – received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal, in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He holds an EC in management and leadership from MIT Sloan School and a post graduation in quality management in the field of Higher Education. He worked with Nokia Siemens Networks and Coriant as a Senior Specialist. He is currently a Full Professor at the Electronics department of the University of Aveiro and a Researcher with the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Aveiro. He was also the University Doctoral School Coordinator for the past 8 years. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed journal articles and more than 250 conference papers. He is a Senior Member of OSA and a TPC Member of major conferences, such as OFC and ECOC, and several other conferences, such as ICTON, Networks, and GLOBECOM. In 2014 he co-founded PICadvanced, a startup focused on providing solutions based on optical assemblies targeting optical networks.

Abstract

Photonic integration has reached a stage of growing maturity, increasingly aligning with the advancements and scalability of microelectronics fabrication processes. This evolution is driving down costs, enhancing accessibility, and bringing photonic technologies closer to meeting the stringent demands of next-generation communication networks. In this talk, we will present how PICadvanced is actively contributing to this transition by accelerating the adoption of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for high-performance optical interfaces. We will discuss our approach to enabling highly flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solutions, positioning photonics as a key enabler for the future of high-speed, energy-efficient network infrastructure.

AGENDA