News

2024

Professor Ramachandran appointed as the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development ad interim of the College of Engineering at Boston University.

Zelin wins the Electrical Engineering Best PhD award.

Professor Ramachandran elected AAAS fellow for his work on topological confinement.

2023

Topological confinement work highlighted as one of 30 significant articles in 2023 by Optics and Photonics News (OPN).

Begüm won the ECE Doctoral Achievement Award.

Zelin’s paper on Topological Confinement published by Science. See popular news article on it.

2022

Professor Ramachandran elected as APS Fellow in recognition of his work on structured and singular light.

Lars’ article on multiphoton microscopy makes the cover of the Journal of Biomedical Optics.

Daniel wins the prestigious NSF GRFP Fellowship. See news item for a summary.

Professor Ramachandran named a Distinguished Professor of Engineering of Boston University.

2021

Jeff Demas appointed Research Assistant Professor at BU.

Zelin’s ECOC 2021 conference abstract designated highly scored (top 10% score amongst conference submissions).

2020

Aaron’s paper on topologically enhanced optical activity published by Nature Communications! See news item for a summary.

Xiao’s APL Photonics article on four-wave mixing with OAM modes featured as a Scilight news item. Also selected as cover art for the issue.

Jeff’s article on broadband intermodal four-wave mixing is amongst the top 10 downloaded articles of PRJ for all of 2019.

2019

Pat’s paper on spin-orbit coupling in fibers published by Nature Communications!

Nenad’s Science paper on OAM data transmission with vortex fibers designated a “Highly Cited Paper” by Web of Science in the Physics category (top 1% in citations, amongst physics publications).

Professor Ramachandran awarded the 2019 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship!

First demonstration of giant optical activity using OAM modes, and its applications to high-resolution spectrometry, presented by Aaron at the CLEO-2019 post-deadline session.

Lars’ paper on soliton self-mode conversion (SSMC) published by Optica! Makes the cover feature for this issue.

Older News
December 2018 Professor Ramachandran named SPIE fellow.
November 2018 Professor Ramachandran named IEEE fellow.
May 2018 Nenad’s Science paper on OAM data transmission with vortex fibers crosses the 1000-citation mark per Google Scholar
May 2018 Jeff wins the best PhD Thesis Award for Electrical Engineering at Boston University. Second year, in a row, that a member of the Ramachandran group wins the best Ph.D. award.
August 2017 Prof. Ramachandran’s article on radially polarised modes in fibers cited amongst Editor’s pick of noteworthy papers on 40th anniversary of Optics Letters.
August 2017 Nenad’s article on OAM control in fibers cited amongst Editor’s pick of noteworthy papers on 40th anniversary of Optics Letters.
May 2017 Pat wins the best Phd Thesis Award for Electrical Engineering at Boston University.
May 2017 First wideband and broadband nonlinear frequency translation in fibers using intermodal nonlinearities, leading to a fiber analog of a high-power tunable Ti:Sapphire laser, presented by Jeff at the CLEO-2017 post-deadline session.
January 2017 Pat Gregg and Lu Yan successfully defend their PhDs to graduate!.
November 2016 First demonstration of higher-order mode nonlinear mixing leading to high peak power 976 nm pulses presented by Jeff at the ASSL-2016 post-deadline session.
September 2016

Pat’s paper on spin-orbit coupled angular momentum fibers wins the second prize in the best student paper presentation competition of ECOC-2016.

September 2016

Pat’s article on long length OAM propagation ranked amongst the most downloaded articles in Optics Express in August 2016.

September 2016

Pat’s article air-core fibers for OAM conservation listed amongst the top 15 most cited Optica papers from 2015.

July 2016

Lu’s CLEO-2016 conference abstract on fiber-based STED illumination highlighted in a Laser Focus World article which became the editor’s pick in Bio-Optics World.

June 2016

First demonstration of spin-orbit coupled eigenmodes in fibers, leading to record number of modes (24), presented by Pat in the CLEO-2016 post-deadline session.

March 2016

Pat’s paper on long length OAM transmission selected as a semifinalist for the Tingye Li award at CLEO-2016.

January 2016

Lu becomes the first student appointed by OSA as a traveling lecturer.

Feb. 2016

Prof. Ramachandran’s invited paper on ring fiber design for OAM ranked amongst the most downloaded fiber optics papers from OSA journals in 2015.

Jan. 2016

Lu’s paper on Q-plate enabled STED illumination ranked amongst the top 10 most downloaded papers from Optica in the last quarter of 2015.

Nov. 2015

NSF blog highlights Lu’s paper on STED illumination; see Year of Light: Beam me down.

Oct. 2015

Lu’s paper on Q-plate enabled STED illumination published by Optica!

Sept. 2015

The NIH BRAIN initiative selects Prof. Ramachandran’s proposal for multiplexed multiphoton connectomics using ultrafast tunable optical fiber sources for an award.

May 2015

Pat’s paper on Q-plate excitation of fiber modes selected as a semifinalist for the Maiman award at CLEO-2015.

Mar. 2015

Jeff’s article on intermodal nonlinear mixing ranked amongst the top 10 downloads from Optica from January to March.

Mar. 2015

Pat’s paper on air-core fibers for OAM conservation published by Optica!

Jan. 2015

Jeff’s paper on intermodal nonlinear mixing published by Optica! Makes the cover feature for this issue.

Sept. 2014

AFOSR selects Prof. Ramachandran’s proposal for the investigation of high-power intermodal nonlinearities, for its 5-year “Basic Research Initiative” award.

May 2014

Article on solid immersion lens microscopy listed in the Virtual Journal of Biomedical Optics (VJBO).

Jan. 2014

Prof. Ramachandran’s article on radially polarised modes in fibers ranked amongst the top 20 downloads from Optics Letters in two years (2012-2013).

July 2013

Prof. Ramachandran receives the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Award for 2013-2015. See IEEE and BU websites for further information.

July 2013

A multi-university team comprising Prof. Ramachandran wins an ONR MURI award for fundamental research on high-rate quantum key distribution in a marine environment.

July 2013

Widespread media coverage for Nenad’s Science paper, including in the BBC, Boston Globe, NBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Business Week, Scientific American, and IEEE Spectrum, to name a few.

June 2013

Nenad’s paper on OAM data transmission with vortex fibers is published by Science!

June 2013

NSF selects Prof. Ramachandran’s proposal for developing endoscopic STED nanoscopy systems for an award.

June 2013

Jeff Demas receives an honourable mention as a Maiman Award Finalist for his CLEO-2013 paper submission and talk, making his paper the top 3 of approximately 1000 student papers at the conference.

April 2013

First authors of 2 papers from the Ramachandran group (Patrick Gregg and Jeff Demas) selected for the CLEO Maiman Award Semifinal list (for best student paper) representing approx. the top 2-3 % of CLEO-2013 submissions with student first authors. In addition, the first student author from a third paper, in collaboration with Prof., Alan Willner’s group (Univ. Southern California), also makes the same semifinalist list.

April 2013

Patrick Gregg wins the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. See BU news item here.

Mar. 2013

DOD awards Prof. Ramachandran a DURIP award associated with his DARPA InPho program on vortex fibers.

Jan. 2013

Nenad’s article on OAM in fibers ranked amongst the top 20 downloads from Optics Letters in two years (2011-2012).

Oct. 2012

Yuhao’s article on Bottle Beams selected by the Virtual Journal of Biomedical Optics (VJBO) for a list of articles of interest to the biomedical community.

Sept. 2012

The first demonstration of a mode-division multiplexed (MDM) transmission link using OAM in (long ~ 1km-length) fibers (in collaboration with the Willner group – USC – and OFS), presented in the post-deadline session of the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) – 2012.

Aug. 2012

Yuhao’s article on Bottle Beams ranked amongst the top 10 downloads from Optics Letters for the month of August.

Aug. 2012

Nenad’s article on OAM in fibers ranked amongst the top 10 downloads from Optics Letters for two months in a row (July & August).

July 2012

DARPA awards phase II funding for studying fiber transport of orbital angular momentum encoded signals.
(PI: S. Ramachandran/BU; co-PIs: S. Golowich/MIT-Lincoln Labs; P. Kristensen/OFS)
http://www.bu.edu/ece/2012/11/15/spinning-with-lights-possibilities/

May 2012

Profs. Ramachandran and Basu win the Dean’s Catalyst Award for investigating Silicon-Germanium Optical Fibers
http://www.bu.edu/mse/2012/05/23/deans-catalyst-awards-to-fund-innovative-research/

May 2012

Six presentations at CLEO-2012 from the Ramachandran group.

Nov 2011

Prof. Ramachandran appointed Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics

October 2011

First demonstration of long-range (km) entanglement of photons with Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM), presented in the post-deadline session of FIO-2011 (OSA Annual Meeting).

August 2011

DoD awards DURIP for equipment purchase for fiber laser projects. (PI: S. Ramachandran)

April 2011

DARPA awards seedling grant for investigating the use of light’s orbital angular momentum as a new degree of freedom in quantum encryption links. (PI: S. Ramachandran/BU; co-PIs: S. Golowich/MIT-Lincoln Labs; P. Kristensen/OFS)

March 2011
Nenad Bozinovic wins the President’s Award for his presentation on optical vortices at the BU Science and Engineering Day.
March 2011
ONR grant award for the development of high-power blue-green lasers for undersea communications. (PI: S. Ramachandran/BU)
February 2011
Prof. Ramachandran appointed Chair of the 2012 OSA Nick Holonyak award committee.
February 2011
ONR grant award for exploring Bessel beams in Maritime Sensing applications. (PI: S. Ramachandran)
January 2011
A novel mode characterization technique is selected for presentation at the post-deadline session of Photonics West 2011.
Nov 2010
ExxonMobile provides a “Knowledge Build Grant” for the study of novel sensing technologies of potential use in oil & gas production.
May 2010
First demonstration of high-energy amplification of higher-order modes, presented in the Post-Deadline Session of CLEO 2010.
March 2010
Army Research Lab (ARL) Grant award forA Flexible, Lightweight, Remotely-Accessible THz Source and Detector.” (PI: S. Ramachandran/BU; co-PI: R. Averitt/BU)
January 2010

First demonstration of nonlinear-optical manipulation of optical vortices in fibers, presented in the Late Breaking Session of Photonics West 2010.

January 2010

Prof. Ramachandran named OSA Fellow.
http://www.osa.org/Awards_and_Grants/Fellow_Members/Recent_Fellows/2010_Fellows.aspx

June 2009
Cover art article on large mode area higher order modes, IEEE Photonics Society Newsletter.
Summer 2009

Prof. Ramachandran inducted into Who’s Who in America

April 2009
“Fibre lasers look to large mode areas,” Optics.org
January 2009
Prof. Ramachandran appointed Guest Editor for the IEEE JSTQE issue on high-power fiber lasers.
May 2008
“Fibre delivers self-healing Bessel beam,” Optics.org
May 2008
A New Kind of PM Fiber, Using Cylindrical Vector Beams,” CLEO-2008 list of newsworthy papers.
March 2008
Prof. Ramachandran appointed Topical Editor of Optics Letters
October 2007
“High power fibers,” in Photonik International, vol. 4
May 2007
“Higher-order mode propagation may enable power scaling” in Laser Focus World
Spring 2007
“Novel Fibers for Dispersive Control of Ultra-Short Pulses,” in SPIE NewsRoom.
October 2006
“Silica fiber achieves anomalous dispersion below 1300 nm,” in Laser Focus World.
September 2006
“HOM fibers provide robust propagation,” in FiberSystems International
September 2006
“Robust light propagation in ultra-large mode-area fibers,” in Photonics Spectra, p. 68, September 2006.