Hello everyone! It’s been quite some time, since we posted our fundraiser, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all donors who’ve reached out to us through their love and generosity. We feel humbled and overwhelmed by the support, which they have offered to Amit. As you would know by reading the stats on our campaign page, that despite your wholehearted support, we are still well short of reaching our mark and that is why, I would like to request you all to share this fundraiser with your friends and family, and if possible, raise funds my running a support campaign. Despite the mixed response and financial difficulties, Amit has made great progress with the paper, which we would like to share with you in brief.

Amit is currently in the final process of preparing the manuscript, and fine tuning the computer code, in order to get the desired results and graphs. Once ready, he will submit the manuscript by the 10th of July, and then move on to preparing the slides for the oral presentation. As mentioned before, two structures have been designed: the photonic spot profile converter for horizontal light coupling, and bridge structure for vertical integration, both on the CMOS compatible SOI platform. Initially, the spot profile converter was simulated using the semi-analytical matrix approach, and more recently, the bridge structure too, was simulated successfully using the same technique, which is fast and requires less memory. The relationship between the waveguide parameters and the optical characteristics was studied and inferenced were drawn. The simulated results have been found to strongly agree with the theory. In the years to come, the spot profile converter has the potential to be commonly used in various bio-chemical sensing applications, while the bridge structure can be used for optical signal routing in optical communication. The proposed structures can soon find their way into commercialization via patent and fabricated in large-scale, for various sensing and photonic applications. 

We would like to also let you all know, a few salient features of the SPIE Optics+Photonics symposium, where Amit’s paper has been selected for oral presentation. It is the largest multidisciplinary optical sciences meeting in the whole of North America, and has an attendance of over 20000. It is the meeting where the latest research in optical engineering and applications, nanotechnology, sustainable energy, organic photonics, and astronomical instrumentation is presented. This meeting lays special emphasis on student networking events, and is home to the world’s largest optics and photonics student leadership workshop. It also features an optical model making contest known as the annual optics outreach games, and a poster session highlighting optics outreach activities by institutes across the globe.