Engineering students in optics and photonics need robust intuitions for the micron-scale behavior of light in dielectric materials. Educators often use textbook images of ray diagrams and static electric field profiles to introduce the behavior of light, after which undergraduate and graduate students are expected to run commercial software simulations to explore the dynamic behavior of waveguide modes. While incredibly powerful and flexible, complex commercial software tools are difficult for novices to use, preventing students from gaining nuanced conceptual insights about the behavior of optical components and devices. The Virtual Manufacturing Lab (VM-Lab) at MIT has created a series of simulations that use novel data visualizations and dynamic electric field profiles to teach the fundamentals of photonic circuit components. This work identifies key misconceptions on the topics of fiber optics, waveguides, and photonic integrated circuits which prevent students from building an accurate model for light propagating in a micron-scale dielectric waveguide. A library of interactive photonics simulations helps students learn about silicon photonics by exploring waveguide modes, mode superposition, on-chip interferometers, resonant structures, and more. In addition, interactive learning games introduce students to the application areas of photonic integrated circuits, including on-chip chemical sensing, hyperscale data centers, RF wireless communication, and LiDAR imaging.
MassTech Collaborative has helped to make the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a beacon for advanced manufacturing. In partnership with the AIM Photonics manufacturing institute, MassTech has launched five Laboratories for Education and Application Prototypes (LEAPs) within academic institutions and/or companies spread across Massachusetts, to develop a skilled workforce in integrated photonics. Hands-on and in-person workshops, bootcamps and laboratory courses are offered at these LEAPs to learners from academia, industry, and the government. The MA LEAP network stands as an excellent self-sustaining model for hands-on STEM education and workforce training for the rest of the country.
In this paper, we describe Illuminator, a digital, online game that offers students the opportunity to learn about the design and operation of sensors that employ integrated photonics. The game is level-based, providing students foundational concepts, and then building on that knowledge to offer progressively more difficult challenges. Though the game could theoretically stand alone, students are intended to play the game in the context of an online course, which was designed in concert with the game so that the game levels support the course material. Illuminator and its paired course are situated within an overall program designed to teach students about various application areas of integrated photonics via other courses, games, and simulations. Illuminator focuses primarily on absorption sensing, though also touches on index sensing.
Silicon-based photonics is mobilizing into a manufacturing industry with specialized integrated circuit design requirements for applications in low power cloud computing, high speed wireless, smart sensing, and augmented imaging. The AIM Photonics Manufacturing USA Institute, which operates the world’s most advanced 300mm semiconductor research fab, has co-developed a Process Design Kit (PDK) in fabless circuit design for these expanding digital and analog applications; however, there currently isn’t available an in-depth curriculum to train engineers (academia, industry) in the AIM PDK process and Electronic Photonic Design Automation (EPDA) software. AIM Photonics Academy, an education initiative of AIM Photonics based at MIT, has collaborated with faculty to create three online MOOC edX courses that (1) introduce integrated photonics devices, and applications performance needs and metrics; and (2) train into the AIM PDK and specialized EPDA tools in a six week design project to lay out an application-specific photonic transceiver. The courses are structured around asynchronous video lectures and exploratory design problems that involve Python and Matlab-based first-principles calculations (systems modeling) or advanced EPDA tools (circuit design and layout). The online MOOC courses can optionally form a tandem blended learning component with two AIM Photonics Academy on-site training programs: the annual AIM Summer Academy one-week intensive program (held every July at MIT), or a photonic integrated circuit testing workshop (the first workshop is planned for fall 2019). These courses are a cornerstone effort at AIM to found and support a specialized cohort community of future integrated photonics designers.
A modular laboratory curriculum with exercises for students and lesson plans for teachers is presented. Fundamentals of basic integrated photonic (IP) devices can be taught, first as a lecture-in-the-lab followed by “hands-on” laboratory measurements. This comprehensive curriculum utilizes data collected from the “AIM Photonics Institute PIC education chip” that was designed specifically for the purpose of education, and was fabricated at AIM SUNY Poly. Training using this modular curriculum will be performed through the AIM Photonics Academy network in New York (NY) and Massachusetts (MA), either as a full semester course or as a condensed boot-camp. A synergistic development and delivery of this curriculum will coherently leverage multiple resources across the network and can serve as a model for education and workforce development in other Manufacturing USA institutes, as well as for overseas partners.
There is large industry demand for qualified engineers and technicians in photonics advanced manufacturing. Current workforce training methods require expensive state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, as well as commercial licenses for photonic design software, which can be prohibitively costly for many universities. Virtual laboratories and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can help fill this training gap by providing a scalable approach to photonics workforce education for an international audience. In this project, AIM Photonics Academy—the education initiative of AIM Photonics, a Manufacturing USA Institute—is creating a virtual laboratory to enable self-directed learning for the emerging photonics workforce. Students learn photonic device and circuit modeling in a 3D online virtual lab environment with interactive simulations of micron-scale photonic visualizations. An intuitive interface highlights the most critical device design parameters and their optimal operational settings for applications in Datacom, wireless communication, sensing, and imaging. Simulations include silicon waveguide propagation and loss, radial waveguide bends, and directional couplers for photonic integrated circuits (PICs). In spring of 2019, AIM Academy has integrated these simulations into an online course focused on PIC-chip design, with a fundamentals course expected in fall of 2019. Additionally, these online tools will be used in a blended learning curriculum in 2020 to train engineers and technicians in semiconductor design, testing and packaging for photonics applications. Following online module completion, students can take blended learning on-site workshops at affiliated university laboratories to capitalize on their simulated training with hands-on experiments in chip design, packaging, and optical or electrical testing.
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