Michal Lipson facts for kids

Michal Lipson (born 1970) is a famous American physicist. She is best known for her amazing work with silicon photonics. This is a special field that uses light to send information through tiny circuits made of silicon.

Dr. Lipson became a member of the important National Academy of Sciences in 2019. In 2010, she received a special award called the MacArthur Fellow. This award recognized her big steps in making silicon devices that work super fast.

She used to teach engineering at Cornell University. Now, she is a professor at Columbia University. Dr. Lipson has also helped start several companies. In 2009, she co-founded PicoLuz. This company works on tiny silicon light technologies. Later, in 2019, she helped start Voyant Photonics. This company creates new lidar technology using silicon photonics. In 2022, she co-founded Xscape Photonics to help make AI and ML faster.

In 2020, Dr. Lipson was chosen to be the vice president of Optica, a leading group for optics and photonics. She then served as Optica's president in 2023.

Michal Lipson's Education Journey

Michal Lipson started her university studies at the University of São Paulo. She then earned her Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in physics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1992.

She continued her studies at the same university. In 1998, she earned her PhD in physics. Her research focused on how light and matter interact in very small spaces. After her PhD, she worked at MIT for two years. In 2001, she joined Cornell University.

Discoveries and Research in Photonics

Dr. Lipson is famous for her work in silicon photonics. She helped create many important silicon parts. These include special guides for light, tiny light rings, and devices that change light signals. She also worked on light detectors and sensors.

In 2004, she published a very important paper about "Slot-waveguides." These are special pathways that guide light in a unique way. Her work has been cited by other scientists thousands of times. She was also the first to show how to make light stronger in silicon. This was a big step towards building optical amplifiers using silicon.

Her MacArthur fellowship award highlighted her work on "ring modulators." These are circular devices that help send signals faster. Her improvements have made silicon circuits smaller and more efficient. These new circuits can send and process information much quicker.

Dr. Lipson has received many awards for her contributions. She is a fellow of Optica. Her current research explores new materials that interact with light. She also works on small, energy-saving light devices and slot waveguides. Her discoveries have been published in top science journals like Nature and Nature Photonics.

Awards and Special Recognitions

Michal Lipson has received many honors for her important work:

• 2005: National Science Foundation Career Award
• 2010: Blavatnik Award
• 2010: MacArthur Fellow
• 2013: Named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for her work on tiny light devices.
• 2015: Recognized by Thomson Reuters as a top-cited researcher in physics.
• 2017: Received the R. W. Wood Prize from Optica.
• 2018: Awarded an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin.
• 2019: Received the IEEE Photonics Award.
• 2019: Awarded the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics.
• 2019: Elected as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
• 2021: Received the OSA John Tyndall Award for her advances in integrated light devices.

Key Scientific Papers

Dr. Lipson has written many important scientific papers. Here are some examples of her work:

• Slot waveguides:
• Frequency combs (devices that create many colors of light):
  • J. S. Levy, A. Gondarenko, M. A. Foster, A. C. Turner-Foster, A. L. Gaeta, M. Lipson, "CMOS-compatible multiple-wavelength oscillator for on-chip optical interconnects." Nature Photonics 4, 37–40 (2010).
  • B. Stern, X. Ji, Y. Okawachi, A. L. Gaeta, M. Lipson, "Battery-operated integrated frequency comb generator". Nature. 562, 401 (2018).
  • A. Dutt, C. Joshi, X. Ji, J. Cardenas, Y. Okawachi, K. Luke, A. L. Gaeta, M. Lipson, "On-chip dual-comb source for spectroscopy". Science Advances 4, e1701858 (2018).
• Ultralow-loss silicon and silicon nitride (materials that lose very little light):
  • J. Cardenas, C. B. Poitras, J. T. Robinson, K. Preston, L. Chen, M. Lipson, "Low loss etchless silicon photonic waveguides". Optics Express. 17, 4752–4757 (2009).
  • K. Luke, A. Dutt, C. B. Poitras, M. Lipson, "Overcoming Si3N4 film stress limitations for high quality factor ring resonators". Optics Express. 21, 22829–22833 (2013).
  • A. Griffith, J. Cardenas, C. B. Poitras, M. Lipson, "High quality factor and high confinement silicon resonators using etchless process". Optics Express, 20, 21341–21345 (2012).
  • X. Ji, F. A. S. Barbosa, S. P. Roberts, A. Dutt, J. Cardenas, Y. Okawachi, A. Bryant, A. L. Gaeta, M. Lipson, "Ultra-low-loss on-chip resonators with sub-milliwatt parametric oscillation threshold". Optica, 4, 619–624 (2017).
• Nonlinear optics in silicon (how light behaves in silicon):
• Modulation in silicon (changing light signals in silicon):
  • Manipatruni S, Lipson, M. and Young, I.A., 2013. Device scaling considerations for nanophotonic CMOS global interconnects. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 19(2), pp. 8200109-8200109.