The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
With this prestigious five-year award, Notaros and her group plan to develop novel integrated-photonics-based platforms, devices, and systems that enable emission of light spanning the visible spectrum and with complex reconfigurable holographic emission profiles. These fundamental developments will be applied to enable next-generation chip-based solutions for augmented-reality displays, impacting consumer, military, and medical applications; optical traps, impacting medical diagnostics, cell experimentation, and human health; and 3D printers, impacting the way society creates.
In addition to these research advancements, this award will allow Notaros and her group to have a broad impact on the future of a well-trained and diverse workforce in the field of silicon photonics and in STEM as a whole. The proposed educational and teaching initiatives will tightly integrate research and education by developing educational materials and curricula that are closely tied to the proposed research activities, and will have a broad impact on the future of photonics education by influencing pedagogy nationwide and engaging learners from diverse backgrounds.
Jelena Notaros is the Robert J. Shillman (1974) Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Principal Investigator in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, and a Core Faculty Member of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020 and 2017, respectively, and B.S. degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015.