Kelsey Lee M.Sci.
december 2024
I joined the Cardenas Lab as a junior in Optics while also pursuing a dual degree in Piano Performance at the Eastman School of Music. At the time, I knew I wanted to focus on optics for my post-grad career and wanted to explore what “research” in optics was like, but I was still missing many of the pieces to understanding why research in integrated photonics is important, or even what it is.
While navigating a busy undergraduate schedule, my first two projects in the lab involved testing and characterizing devices under the guidance of Xiaotong and Meiting. These were some of my first valuable experiences working on alignments and measurements in the lab. One of the most important things I learned was that there is no longer a safety net of having the “right answers” when working on a research project. And while getting accustomed to this was scary at first, it made future projects all the more exciting.
My senior design project (also advised by Professor Cardenas) was about exploring existing software for modeling and designing metalenses, which are flat lenses that use sub-wavelength scale patterns of “meta-atoms” to manipulate light. This led to a subsequent research project in the group to design metalenses for the purpose of aiding waveguide coupling, which I worked on with the support of Jiewei. It was incredibly rewarding to track my own growth from having minimal prior experience in Python programming to working on complex FDTD simulation and optimization of metasurfaces.
Like many of the other undergrads in the group, by this time, I started to realize the vast amount of interesting and important projects that I can have the opportunity to work on through pursuing a PhD. Next year, I’m beyond excited to be starting my PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University continuing to work on computational optics. I’m very grateful for my time in the lab and all of the support I’ve received. Everyone I’ve met and worked with in the lab has so much knowledge and perspective for what we do and I’m excited to visit and see what the Cardenas lab family is up to.