People
Principal Investigator
Michelle Y. Sander
Email: msander[at]bu[dot]edu
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Division of Materials Science and Engineering
BU Photonics Center PHO 534
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.Sc., Georgia Institute of Technology
Dipl-Ing., TU Braunschweig, Germany
Postdoctoral Associate
Panagis Samolis
Email: psamolis@bu.edu
BU Photonics Center PHO 504
Panagis pursued a BS in Electrical Engineering with a concentration in the field of nanotechnology and graduated in Spring 2017. He is now a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His goal for the future is to pursue an academic career in the field of photonics and ultrafast optics. In his free time he enjoys traveling and reading literature.
Graduate Students
Samuel Bechtold
Email: samu@bu.edu
BU Photonics Center PHO 504
Sämu is a PhD student in our ECE department with a background in nonlinear photonics and photonic integrated circuit design & characterization through their B.Sc from Bridgewater State University where they double majored in Photonic & Optical Engineering and Physics, graduating in the spring of 2024. They worked as a technologist for Spark Photonics from June 2023 – August 2024. Sämu intends to complete their PhD and use their education to help foster the development of future photonic engineers from diverse backgrounds who will make a better world possible. In their free time Sämu is an environmental, peace activist who is committed to building community and empowering working people.
Timothy Lim
Email: tlim91@bu.edu
BU Photonics Center PHO 504
Tim received a B.S. in Physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He started as a M.S. student in Electrical Engineering in 2019 and is now a PhD student. In his free time, he enjoys playing video games and rock climbing.
Bahar R. Durgun
Email: rdurgun@bu.edu
BU Photonics Center PHO 504
Bahar received his B. Sc. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering at Middle East Technical University, Turkiye in 2022. She is currently a PhD student working on photothermal microscopy. Her interests outside research include biking, sci-fi literature and video games.
Urmi Talukdar
Email: urmiece@bu.edu
BU Photonics Center PHO 504
Urmi completed her B.Sc. and M.S. in Physics from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. She envisages herself as a prolific researcher, contributing to my research fields for the benefit of mankind. In her free time, she enjoys listening to classical music, Tagore’s songs, reading literature and watching movies.
Master Students
Jordan Blandford (ECE)
Email: jpbland@bu.edu
Jessica Feng (BME)
Email: jjfeng13@bu.edu
Undergraduate Students
Lachlan Hooper (BU Physics)
Maria Davey (BU ECE)
Eddie Wei (BU ECE)
Eddie is an undergraduate senior at Boston University, pursuing a double degree in Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He is currently conducting research on the
photothermal microscopy of fibroblasts and astrocytes with Panagis and Bahar. His ultimate
goal is to develop accessible imaging technology that can detect cancer at very early stages.
Outside of academics and research, he enjoys playing video games, crossfit exercises, tennis,
and piano.
Previous Group Pictures
Former Group Members
- Shutao Xu (BU ECE PhD 2024)
- Yiwen Zhang (BU BME 2024)
- Daniel Jiang (BU BME 2023)
- Benyamin Trachtenberg (BU ECE 2023)
- Xuedong Zhu (BU BME PhD 2022)
- Junjie Zeng (BU ECE PhD 2022)
- Ahmet Akosman (BU ECE PhD 2018)
- Atcha Totachawattana (BU ECE PhD 2017)
- Chenxin Sun (BU BME MS 2022)
- Dev Bhatia (BU ECE 2022)
- Daniel Gruspier (BU ECE 2022)
- Thachachanok (Pan) Menasuta (BU ECE)
- Allen Zou (BU ECE)
- Benjamin Livney (BU ECE)
- James Coll (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2019)
- Despina Pavlidis (REU Summer 2018, Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)
- Wanli Gao (Beijing University 2019)
- Sara Denner (BU Mechanical Engineering, 2020)
- Brian Dyer Ricci (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2020)
- Pallavi Aysola (BU Biomedical Engineering, 2021
- Rachel Yang (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering)
- Andres Vasquez (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2018)
- Peter Erf (BU Mechanical Engineering, 2018)
- Ryan Ng (NSF REU summer 2017, Mechanical engineering at NYC)
- Tanea Cezar (NSF RET Summer 2017, 8th grade science teacher at Fuller Middle School, Framingham Massachusetts)
- Di Huang (BU ECE, Master thesis Spring 2017)
- Casey Biederman (SUNY Polytechnic Institute, REU Summer 2016)
- Karl Muench (RET Summer 2016)
- Milan Wesseler (University of Konstanz, Bachelor Thesis Spring 2015)
- James Bezuk (B.S. in Electrical engineering, Spring 2015; undergraduate research student from Oct 2013 – May 2015)
- Rishab Kedia (BU RISE high school student summer 2015)
- Dr. Hui Liu (postdoctoral associate 2013-2014)
- Janani Chinnam (BU RISE high school student summer 2014)
