Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, February 22, 2016 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Michael Krainak
"Integrated Photonics"
ABSTRACT -- Integrated photonics generally is the integration of multiple lithographically defined photonic and electronic components and devices (e.g. lasers, detectors, waveguides/passive structures, modulators, electronic control and optical interconnects) on a single platform with nanometer-scale feature sizes. The development of photonic integrated circuits permits size, weight, power and cost reductions for spacecraft microprocessors, optical communication, processor buses, advanced data processing, and integrated optic science instrument optical systems, subsystems and components. This is particularly critical for small spacecraft platforms.
On July 27, 2015, Vice President Joe Biden, at an event in Rochester, NY, announced that the New York consortium had been selected to lead the Integrated Photonics Institute for Manufacturing Innovation (IP-IMI). Proposed as part of President Obama's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), the IP-IMI was established with $110M to bring government, industry, and academia together to advance state-of-the-art photonics technology. The Institute will develop and demonstrate innovative manufacturing technologies for:
- Ultra-high-speed transmission of signals for the internet and telecommunications
- New high-performance information-processing systems and computing
- Compact sensor applications enabling dramatic medical advances in diagnostics and treatment
- Multi-sensor applications including urban navigation, free space optical communications and quantum information sciences
- Other diverse military applications including electronic warfare, analog RF sensing, communications, and chemical/biological detection
We will give an overview of integrated photonics and some NASA applications.
SPEAKER -- Dr. Michael Krainak received his BS in electrical engineering from Catholic University and MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He started his career as a telephone switch office field engineer for AT&T Western Electric. He worked for ten years at the National Security Agency in signal processing, Fourier optics, and microelectronic circuit design. For the past twenty-four years he has worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on inter-satellite laser communications and lidar. Dr. Krainak is presently the Head of the Laser and Electro-Optics Branch at NASA-GSFC.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Michael Johnson
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov