Dr. Nicole Pfiester Latham earned her Ph.D. and master's degrees from Tufts University in electrical engineering. Her teaching interests include intro to physics, nanotechnology, semiconductor devices and entrepreneurship. She was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow from 2014 to 2019 and earned a Future Leader of Engineering Fellowship. She was also named the Tufts University Outstanding Graduate Student Contributor to Engineering Education.
Academic Degrees
- Joint-Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science Engineering. Tufts University (2019)
- Masters of Science in Electrical and
Computer Engineering. Tufts University (2016) - Bachelor of Science in Physics. Purdue University (20011)
Awards & Honors
- SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing Rising Researcher 2020
Mistletoe Research Fellowship from the Momental Foundation (2020)
The Ohio State University President's Postdoctoral Scholar (2019)
Tufts University Deans' Fellowship (2015-2017)
Future Leader of Engineering Fellowship (2015-2017)
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (2014-2019)
Research Interests
- Metasurfaces
- Optoelectronics
- Sensing Applications
- Semiconductor and Nanomaterial Processing
Select Publications & Presentations
- J. Budhu, N. A. Pfiester, K.-K. Choi, S. Young, C. Ball, S. Krishna, and A. Grbic."Dielectric Resonator Antenna-Coupled Antimonide-Based Detectors (DRACAD) for the Infrared," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 69, no. 10, pp. 6762-6771, Oct. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TAP.2021.3069522.
- N. A. Pfiester, S. A. Mills, J. Budhu, K.-K. Choi, C. D. Ball, S. M. Young, A. Grbic, D. Lubyshev, J. M. Fastenau, A. W. K. Liu, S. Krishna, "Self-aligned etching of subwavelength longwave infrared type-II superlattice pixels," Proc. SPIE 11741, Infrared Technology and Applications XLVII, 117410R (28 April 2021); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.
2587766 - N. A. Pfiester, J. Budhu, S. H. Lee, V. Rogers, K.-K. Choi, C. D. Ball, S. M. Young, A. Grbic, S. Krishna, "Modeling and extraction of optical characteristics of InAs/GaSb strained layer superlattice," Proc. SPIE 11407, Infrared Technology and Applications XLVI, 114070M (18 May 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.
2558525 - N. A. Pfiester, K. A. Grossklaus, M. A. Stevens, and T. E. Vandervelde, "Effect of microstructure on the optical properties of sputtered iridium thin films," Opt. Mater. Express 10, 1120-1128 (2020)
- N. A. Pfiester and T. E. Vandervelde. "Selective emitters for thermophotovoltaic applications." Physica status solidi (a) 214 (1), 1600410 (2017)
Teaching Interests
- Introductory Physics
- Nanotechnology
- Semiconductor Devices
- Entrepreneurship