Appointments
Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) [2022 —
Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University [ — 2021]
Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering (Minor: Applied Physics), Cornell University, 2017
Bachelor of Technology, Electronics & ECE, (Minor: Physics) IIT Kharagpur, 2011
Honors & Awards, and Professional Service
Publications
Past background
I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Ginzton Lab at Stanford University, working with Professor Shanhui Fan. My postdoc work focused on topological phenomena such as the quantum Hall effect in time-modulated photonic structures.
I received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, working in Prof. Michal Lipson’s Nanophotonics Group (currently at Columbia University). My graduate-school research was in the field of on-chip quantum and nonlinear nanophotonics, where I was fortunate to collaborate closely with (and be mentored by) Prof. Paulo Nussenzveig and Prof. Alexander L. Gaeta. Specifically, we harnessed ultralow-loss silicon nitride microresonators to generate quantum states such as squeezed light. Additionally, we generated frequency combs at high repetition rates and demonstrated ultrafast dual-comb spectroscopy. Before joining Cornell, I received a Bachelor in Technology (with Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, where I numerically investigated quantum tunneling through double barrier potentials with Prof. Sayan Kar, and also designed large-mode-area capillary optical fibers with Prof. Shailendra K. Varshney.
In my postdoctoral work, motivated by ideas from topological photonics, we started exploring a novel concept termed “synthetic dimensions“. Synthetic dimensions are formed by coupling states spanned by an internal photonic degree of freedom (e.g. frequency, polarization), or by engineering additional spatiotemporal mode structure on the electromagnetic field (e.g. transverse modes, orbital angular momentum, ultrashort temporal pulses). While initial theory and experiments (especially in ultracold atoms) in synthetic dimensions focused on nontrivial topological physics, future work holds promise for emerging quantum technologies and photonic machine learning hardware.