Dr. Azad Siahmakoun is an award-winning optical engineer and a former Endowed Chair for Innovation in STEM Education and Professor of Physics & Optical Engineering. He specializes in optics, micro-electro-mechanical Systems (MEMS), and nanotechnology. His educational and research/development activities have been supported by $6.4 million from federal/state agencies and industries. Dr. Siahmakoun holds four patents and has supervised more than 100 undergraduate research projects and dozens of master’s student theses. He directs the Micro-Nano Device and Systems (MiNDS) lab, the Nonlinear Optics lab, and the Center for Applied Optics Studies, and also is Associate Dean of Faculty and Director of Graduate Studies. Dr. Siahmakoun has received the Board of Trustees Outstanding Scholar Award and is an International Society for Optical Engineering Fellow, a senior member of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and a Senior Fellow in the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). Check out his personal web page.
Academic Degrees
- PhD, University of Arkansas, Physics, 1987
- MS, Texas A&I University, Physics, 1981
- BS, Joundi Shapoor University, Physics, 1978
Awards & Honors
- Senior Member, The Optical Society
- Fellow, International Society for Optical Engineering, 2009
- Senior Fellow, Office of Naval Research, 2007
- Board of Trustees Outstanding Scholar Award, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 1999
Publications & Presentations
- Siahmakoun, A., Reeves, E. and Costanzo-Caso, P., “Photonic Pulse-width Modulation for A/D Conversion,” Journal of Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Vol. 57, 574-578, 2015
- Siahmakoun, A., Reeves, E. and Costanzo-Caso, P., “A Complete Theoretical Description of the First-Order Delta-Sigma Modulation for Analog-to-NRZ Binary Conversion,” International Society for Optics and Photonics’ Photonic West, San Francisco, 2015
- Siahmakoun, A., Carver, S. and Granieri, S., “Asynchronous Photonic A/D Converter,” Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics, Netherlands, 2012
- Gehl, M., Dapkus, C., Granieri, S. and Siahmakoun, A., “2 Gb/s All-Optical D/A Converter,” Journal of Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Vol. 51, 1,561-1,565, 2009
- Siahmakoun, A., Gehl, M. and Dapkus, C., “Photonic Arbitrary Waveform Generator,” Microwave Photonics (MWP) Conference, Valencia, Spain, 2009
- Siahmakoun, A., Jaeger, M. and Granieri, S., “Multiple RF Beams Processing by an Optical Transmit/Receive Beamformer with Ternary Architecture,” Journal of Optical Engineering, Vol. 44, 1-6, 2005
- Siahmakoun, A., Wilkerson, J., Barnett, A. and Syed, M., “Plasmonic Effects in Nichrome Alloy Nano-Films,” European Optics Society Conference, Paris, France, 2008
- Siahmakoun, A., Jaeger, M., Li, Y., Granieri, S. and Black, B., “Two-Beam Two-Channel Optical T/R Beamformer Using Ternary Programmable Dispersion Matrix,” Microwave Photonics Conference, Budapest, Hungry, 2003
- Nagel, M. and Siahmakoun, A., “Polarization-Independent WDM Using Thermally Fixed Photorefractive Gratings in LiNbO3,” Journal of Optical Engineering, Vol.. 41, 2,975-2,982, 2002
- Litherland, T. and Siahmakoun, A., “Chaotic Behavior of Zeeman Catastrophe Machine," American Journal of Physics, Vol. 63, 426-431, 1995
Research Experiences
- Silicon photonics devices and systems
- Photonic data converters
- Photorefractive materials and devices
- Fiber-optics signal processing
- Beamforming for phased-array antennas
Teaching Interests
- Electro-optics
- Nonlinear optics
- Lasers
- Optical signal and image processing
- Fabrication of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)
- Nanotechnology
- Nanophotonics
- Silicon photonics
- Chaotic systems