Faculty Director Professor
Axel Scherer is the Bernard A. Neches Professor of
Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Physics and the Director
of the Kavli Nanoscience
Institute at Caltech.
He received his PhD from the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985 and subsequently
worked at Bellcore on the microfabrication of optoelectronic devices.
In 1993, he joined Caltech and formed a nanofabrication research
effort centered on optical, magnetic, electronic and microfluidic
devices.
Professor Scherer’s research effort includes the development
and application of new microfabrication and design methods. In
the past, Professor Scherer has pioneered the development of vertical
cavity lasers. He successfully packaged these devices into the
first large addressable arrays. Professor
Scherer’s group also developed electromagnetic design tools for the definition
of high Q optical microcavities and pioneered silicon opto-electronic
devices in the silicon on insulator materials system. Moreover,
Professor Scherer’s group miniaturized spectrometers and
integrated fluidics into optical devices. Fundamentally new structures,
such as the photonic bandgap nanocavities created by three-dimensional
microfabrication in Professor Scherer’s laboratory have led
to the first demonstration of strong coupling between single quantum
dots and optical microcavities. This work has resulted in some
of the world’s smallest lasers, modulators and waveguides,
as well as very high efficiency solid state light emitters based
on metal surface plasmons. Professor Scherer has co-authored over
250 publications and holds over 50 patents on microfabrication
and design of devices. In his research group, design and fabrication
techniques are presently applied towards the miniaturization of
integrated microfluidic valves and pumps with optical micro- and
nano-devices for nanophotonics and nano-biotechnology.
Technical Manager Saurabh
Vyawahare got his BTech in Chemical Engineering from IIT
Madras in 2001, followed by MS (Applied Physics) in 2003 from Caltech,
and expects his PhD (Applied Physics) in 2006, also from Caltech.
He has over 3 years of experience training graduate and undergraduate
students in making microfluidic devices, and is currently associated
with Professor Axel Scherer's Nano-fabrication
Group. Saurabh's research interests include topics in nanofabrication,
opto-fluidics and bio-engineering.
Technician
Christina
Morales has been working as a microfluidic
technician since 2003. Her previous jobs included network and computer
repair and teaching gifted children. Christina's experience includes
histotechnology, electron microscopy and biotechnology.
