The New Me – Short Biographies

Now that I have graduated from Michigan Tech, it is time to updated my short biographies. There are two standard sizes: 1 paragraph and 120 characters.

So, here are mine:

Paragraph:

Elizabeth Cloos is a 1st year Electrical Engineering – Optics graduate student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering  in 2012 from Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI.  She is a very active student with many interests. Cloos is a student member of IEEE, SPIE, OSA, SWE, and HKN. In her free time, she plays Clarinet and Accordion, enjoys reading, and playing games with friends. Cloos has a passion for engineering, optics, and people. Her passion for optics is evident in her research interests of nonlinear optics, laser cooling, and magento-optic effects. In general, she wishes to change the world through thoughtful application of photonic technology and human connection. Cloos’ long-term goals include obtaining a PhD in the optics field, obtaining her P.E. license, and traveling the world.

and

120 Character “Twitter Length”:

1st yr Optics grad student at Michigan. Michigan Tech ’12 alumna. Passionate about Optics, music, people, and language.

Want to learn more about me?
Twitter: www.twitter.com/efcloos
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/efcloos

The Next Step

Greetings!

As the semester is quickly coming to a close, I am getting excited for the next steps in my life. I will be starting research at the University of Michigan in nonlinear optics under the UM Rackham Summer Institute research program in June. I am very excited to be taking my optics education to the next level.

• University of Michigan – I will be pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering with a focus in optics and photonics. I will be researching with Dr. Stephen Rand in the areas of laser cooling and magneto-optic interactions such as the one shown here.
• National Science Foundation GRFP – I have received a 3-year fellowship from the National Science Foundation. I was selected as one of 2000 recipients out of over 20,000 applicants.
• Rackham Merit Fellowship – I have also received a fellowship from the UM Rackham College of Graduate Studies. This fellowship will support me after NSF.
• Professional Societies – I will be continuing my involvement in SPIE, OSA, IEEE, and SWE. Ann Arbor has a local chapter of OSA. UM has graduate section of SWE. I hope to start up a student chapter of SPIE on campus before the end of the year. My professional involvement will greatly help my research.

Well, that gives a broad overview. I will try to update my blog more frequently with all of the exciting academic and social happenings in Ann Arbor, MI. Until then, T-19 days until graduation!

~ Liz

MIT Photonic Bands: A Review

For my EE3291: Photonic Materials and Devices course at Michigan Tech, I was tasked with using the MIT Photonic Bands program (link) to simulate photonic band structures. It is “a free program for computing the band structures (dispersion relations) and electromagnetic modes of periodic dielectric structures, on both serial and parallel computers. [1]” Here are some of my thoughts on the program and the project:

Ease of Use:

MIT Photonic Bands has a bit of a learning curve. In order to use the program you need to install Linux (I used Debian) and know how to use the command line. At first, it is an intimidating program due to its lack of user interface, but it can be easily mastered. In Debian, MIT Photonic Bands can be installed straight from the software center. In other Linux systems, you may have to compile manually.

Pros vs Cons:

Positives

• Computational Power
• Helpful Tutorials
• Scheme language
• ctl files

Negatives

• No GUI

My Project:

For class, my project was to go through all of the tutorials and then simulate a given structure. The given structure was a triangular periodic lattice of infinite rods with one missing in the center.

By modifying the triangular rod lattice tutorial, I came up with these images. The blue and red show the peaks and troughs of the electromagnetic field amplitude for various modes. I have included images for modes 1 – 16. I followed the Data Analysis Tutorial. See the online text book for more details.

The rod structure

Band 1

Band 2

Band 3

Band 4

Band 5

Band 6

Band 8

Band 7

Band 9

Band 10

Band 11

Band 12

Band 13

Band 14

Band 15

Band 16

Overall Thoughts:

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this program. At first it was complicated, but after going through the tutorials, it all made a lot more sense. The online text book helped connect the tutorial images to other photonic applications. It is a powerful program and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to simulate photonic band structures.

Sources:

[1] http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/MIT_Photonic_Bands