About a dozen students enrolled in STEM programs at U.S. colleges and universities, as well as engineers and designers from both start-ups and established companies in the integrated photonics industry, gathered recently at MIT and BSU with the same goal in mind: to gain more hands-on experience using the schools’ state-of-the art tools to help them better understand photonic integrated circuit (PIC) theory, testing and packaging during AIM Photonics’ hands-on Photonics Bootcamp.
The bi-annual event, which was held Jan. 10-12 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Bridgewater State University (BSU), kicked off with opening remarks from Dr. Anu Agarwal, Principal Research Scientist at MIT, followed by a deep dive into integrated photonics with a series of lectures and workshops to prepare attendees for the hands-on testing and packaging training that would follow at the Labs for Education & Application Prototype (LEAP) at MIT and BSU, as well as MIT’s Electronic and Photonic Materials Group Lab and Photonics and Electronics Research Group Lab.