Matthew Tomes, graduate student in the Electrical Engineering program, received a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his research in Brillouin MEMS. Buss works with Prof. Tal Carmon, professor of EECS and member of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science.

Tomes described his research, which focuses on interaction between light and structure. "These structures are micro-scale resonators fabricated on-chip," said Tomes. "Formerly, in interactions with light, structures were treated as rigid bodies, unaffected by impinging light. Recently, dissipation reduction due to nano-scale smoothening of devices has allowed entering a regime where this assumption no longer holds. Light is now able to affect the motion of macroscopic mechanical devices. Similar to electro optics a few decades ago, radiation pressure is nowadays reported in more and more devices with various regimes of operation. We recently reported on using compression by light to allow photonic-MEMS vibrating at record 11 GHz rates. We are continuing in investigating new types of radiation pressures and in using vibrating devices as frequency standards."

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The National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad.

Posted: April 16, 2010 by
Catharine June
EECS/ECE Communications Coordinator
cmsj@umich.edu or 734-936-2965