{"id":11,"date":"2013-03-31T12:28:10","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T16:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2026-05-11T09:51:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:51:41","slug":"people","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/people\/","title":{"rendered":"People"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n <\/p>\n

Principal Investigator<\/h3>\n\"\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

Michelle Y. Sander<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: msander[at]<\/em>bu[dot]<\/em>edu<\/p>\n

Professor<\/p>\n

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
\nDivision of Materials Science and Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering<\/p>\n

BU Photonics Center PHO 534<\/p>\n

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
\nM.Sc., Georgia Institute of Technology
\nDipl-Ing., TU Braunschweig, Germany<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Graduate Students<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Samuel Bechtold
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: samu@bu.edu <\/a><\/p>\n

BU Photonics Center PHO 504<\/p>\n

S\u00e4mu 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. S\u00e4mu 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 S\u00e4mu is an environmental, peace activist who is committed to building community and empowering working people.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Timothy Lim<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: tlim91@bu.edu <\/a><\/p>\n

BU Photonics Center PHO 504<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Vera Staub<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: @bu.edu <\/a><\/p>\n

BU Photonics Center PHO 504<\/p>\n

Vera\u00a0is a PhD student in the Physics department. She received her B.A. in Physics from Wellesley College. In her free time, she enjoys cooking and baking, making art, and discovering hidden gem places in Boston.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zichen Bai<\/strong><\/p>\n

Email: @bu.edu <\/a><\/p>\n

BU Photonics Center PHO 504<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Master Students<\/h3>\n

Anqi Wei\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Undergraduate Students<\/h3>\n

Maria Davey (BU ECE)<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Noah Orellana (BU ECE)<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Previous Group Pictures<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"GroupPicture_NEW\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Former Group Members<\/h3>\n
    \n
  • Rahmetullah Durgun (BU ECE MS 2025)<\/li>\n
  • Shutao Xu (BU ECE PhD 2024)<\/li>\n
  • Yiwen Zhang (BU BME 2024)<\/li>\n
  • Daniel Jiang (BU BME 2023)<\/li>\n
  • Benyamin Trachtenberg (BU ECE 2023)<\/li>\n
  • Xuedong Zhu (BU BME PhD 2022)<\/li>\n
  • Junjie Zeng (BU ECE PhD 2022)<\/li>\n
  • Ahmet Akosman (BU ECE PhD 2018)<\/li>\n
  • Atcha Totachawattana (BU ECE PhD 2017)<\/li>\n
  • Chenxin Sun (BU BME MS 2022)<\/li>\n
  • Dev Bhatia (BU ECE 2022)<\/li>\n
  • Daniel Gruspier (BU ECE 2022)<\/li>\n
  • Thachachanok (Pan) Menasuta (BU ECE)<\/li>\n
  • Allen Zou (BU ECE)<\/li>\n
  • Benjamin Livney (BU ECE)<\/li>\n
  • James Coll (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2019)<\/li>\n
  • Despina Pavlidis (REU Summer 2018, Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)<\/li>\n
  • Wanli Gao (Beijing University 2019)<\/li>\n
  • Sara Denner (BU Mechanical Engineering, 2020)<\/li>\n
  • Brian Dyer Ricci (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2020)<\/li>\n
  • Pallavi Aysola (BU Biomedical Engineering, 2021<\/li>\n
  • Rachel Yang (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering)<\/li>\n
  • Andres Vasquez (BU Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2018)<\/li>\n
  • Peter Erf (BU Mechanical Engineering, 2018)<\/li>\n
  • Ryan Ng (NSF REU summer 2017, Mechanical engineering at NYC)<\/li>\n
  • Tanea Cezar (NSF RET Summer 2017, 8th grade science teacher at Fuller Middle School, Framingham Massachusetts)<\/li>\n
  • Di Huang (BU ECE, Master thesis Spring 2017)<\/li>\n
  • Casey Biederman (SUNY Polytechnic Institute, REU Summer 2016)<\/li>\n
  • Karl Muench (RET Summer 2016)<\/li>\n
  • Milan Wesseler (University of Konstanz, Bachelor Thesis Spring 2015)<\/li>\n
  • James Bezuk (B.S. in Electrical engineering, Spring 2015; undergraduate research student from Oct 2013 – May 2015)<\/li>\n
  • Rishab Kedia (BU RISE high school student summer 2015)<\/li>\n
  • Dr. Hui Liu (postdoctoral associate 2013-2014)<\/li>\n
  • Janani Chinnam (BU RISE high school student summer 2014)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  Principal Investigator<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7153,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"profiles.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ufolab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}