Ozan Oner

PHD STUDENT

I joined the Nonlinear Optics group at the University of Ottawa in 2021 as a part of an Honours project during my undergraduate degrees of Electrical Engineering (B.A.Sc.) and Physics (B.Sc). In 2022, I joined the Nonlinear Optics group as a Masters student in Physics. However, I fell down the rabbit hole of research, enjoying every aspect of determining the unknown. In August of 2023, I fast-tracked to a Ph.D. in physics.

I work on several projects covering the entire design cycle of integrated photonic semiconductors. I firmly believe that a good designer understands the processes in which devices are fabricated with since the design of components are constrained by the limitations of available fabrication equipment. To this extent, I am working on designing a library of components for a nonlinear integrated photonic platform named InGaAsP-On-Insulator (IOI). InGaAsP is the transparent/intrinsic layer in InP lasers and photodetectors, InGaAsP is also lattice matched with InP. Thus, InP of various dopings can be grown on top of InGaAsP for active device integration. The main goal of IOI is to develop a library of passive nonlinear photonic components to enable system level engineers to create Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). The beauty of this library is that it will provide nonlinear capabilities not yet seen in PICs. End applications are to include but not limited to: soliton formation, frequency comb generation, nonlinear vector matrix multiplication, and photonic logic gates. IOI will be fabricated at the University of Ottawa’s nanofabrication facilities. 

A significant amount of my time also pertains to the characterization of photonic devices. I enjoy writing python scripts to control laboratory equipment, enabling wavelength, temperature, and power tuning capabilities for photonic experiments, significantly reducing data collection time.  Currently, characterization projects include a collaboration with the National Research Council (NRC) regarding nonlinear optical characterization of an all-dielectric Huygens’ meta-waveguide in a silicon on insulator (SOI) platform and characterization of temperature tunable distributed feedback-back (DFB) lasers. 

Aside from elemental research, I enjoy studying the Canadian photonics ecosystem. Alongside Mustafa Hammood (UBC) and Matthew Posner (Optonique), we created a survey of needed skills in the Canadian photonics industry which was distributed to over 400 Canadian photonics companies. I was also responsible for analysis of survey data via python to determine hiring difficulties and most needed technical skills amongst design, manufacturing, testing, software and general knowledge. Our work was presented at the 2023 conference for Education and Training in Optics and Photonics (ETOP) in Cocoa Beach, Florida, USA: A study of the skills required by the Canadian photonics industry (optica.org).

When not working, I enjoy spending time outside, taking advantage of seasonal activities.