News on PAL

PAL @ Photonics West 2026!

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

PAL members are heading to San Francisco for SPIE Photonics West 2026!

We are excited to share our latest breakthroughs in integrated photonics and optical computing. This year, we have three oral presentations and two posters covering

Design Rule-Compliant Inverse Design: Using deep generative networks for fabrication-compatible devices
AI-Driven Optimization: Transformer-based surrogate simulator models complex photonic architectures
Thermally Reconfigurable Devices: Novel reconfigurable splitters and adaptive photonic circuits
Random Deep Photonic Processors: High-throughput optical inference with cascaded MZI arrays
Photonic Imitation Learning: Deep photonic agentic networks for control tasks

Our work at this conference focuses on enabling arbitrary optical capabilities through deep photonic network architectures and AI-enabled devices.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Why rely on polarization-diversity with duplicated circuits, when you can program both polarizations into one?

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Integrated photonics has always had a complicated relationship with polarization. The conventional solution has been polarization-diversity schemes: separate the two polarizations and route them through duplicate circuits—doubling both footprint and complexity.

We decided to flip the script. Instead of duplicating circuits, we treat polarization as just another parameter to program directly into the geometry of our devices, just like we do for wavelength.

CLEO Europe 2025: Rethinking Simulation Speed with Data-Driven EME

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’re thrilled to share that our latest work, “Experimental Demonstration of Ultra-Wideband Tapers, Splitters and Crossings with sub-0.1dB Loss Through Computationally Efficient and Data-Driven Eigenmode Expansion” has been accepted for presentation at CLEO Europe 2025!

Rethinking Simulation Speed
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Photonic devices like tapers, splitters, and crossings are foundational to modern optical systems—but traditionally, designing them with high accuracy and low loss comes at a heavy computational cost.

This work presents an alternative: a data-driven eigenmode expansion (EME) framework that reduces simulation times from hours to milliseconds—without sacrificing physical accuracy. By leveraging precomputed eigenmode scattering matrices and parallel GPU processing, we model broadband light propagation in arbitrary geometries with remarkable speed.

Rapid Optical Eigenmode Optimizer: Rethinking Photonic Simulation

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What if you could simulate a photonic device in milliseconds instead of minutes or hours?

This is no longer just an idea. With our recently published design framework ROMEO (Rapid Optical Eigenmode Optimizer), we’re beginning to see what’s possible when simulation times are drastically reduced.

As photonics continues to expand into new applications, there’s growing demand for ultra-efficient, compact, and broadband photonic devices. Algorithmically optimized (or inverse-designed) structures offer a promising approach, but the physical simulations required often dominate the computational cost. To make meaningful progress, we need much faster (and still accurate) simulation techniques. That’s where ROMEO comes in.

Prof. Magden Receives Prestigious Award for Photonic Machine Learning Research

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are proud to announce that Prof. Magden has been selected for the highly competitive 2247-D National Early-Stage Researchers Program Award, to support his research on integrated photonic machine learning systems.

This program supports high-impact research projects that aim to fill critical gaps in their fields, offer fresh perspectives to the research community, and hold strong potential for major discoveries and technological breakthroughs. Prof. Magden’s project stands out for its innovative approach to developing photonic hardware that dramatically improves energy efficiency, scalability, and noise tolerance in machine learning systems.

Our Research Team is Growing: Welcome Bahrem and Ujal

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Bahrem Serhat Danis and Ujal Rzayev have joined the Photonic Architecture Lab. Their addition brings new energy and perspectives to our ongoing research in integrated photonics and computational photonic systems. We are excited to have them on board and look forward to the advancements their work will bring.

Bahrem Serhat Danis will focus on research at the intersection of photonic networks and neuromorphic computing. His work aims to explore emerging architectures that leverage the unique capabilities of photonic systems for information processing. He will also contribute to the development of more effective strategies for inverse design.

Deep Learning for Light: A New Era of Photonic Design

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As our digital world demands more speed and smarter sensors, the hardware under the hood—Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs)—must become increasingly complex. But there’s a catch: designing these tiny chips to handle light in specific, ultra-fast ways is notoriously difficult and computationally expensive.

Traditionally, engineers relied on physical intuition or slow, iterative simulations that could take hours or even days to design a single component. In a new study published in Nature Communications, PAL researchers have unveiled a workaround: a Highly-Scalable Deep Photonic Network platform that can design state-of-the-art optical components in under two minutes.

PAL @ Photonics West 2024!

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

PAL members will have a number of presentations at Photonics West this week! We have four oral presentations throughout the week, and also several posters on Wednesday by current and former team members. We look forward to seeing you there.

Most of our work at this conference focuses on demonstrations of photonic design regimes for arbitrary optical capabilities using deep photonic network architectures and AI-enabled devices.

Accelerating Inverse Photonic Design with Factorization Caching

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What if the bottleneck in inverse photonic design—solving Maxwell’s equations—could be scaled away?

Our latest work, published in Applied Physics Letters, introduces a multi-faceted factorization caching strategy that drastically reduces simulation runtimes in photonic inverse design. This approach enables up to 9.2× speedups in device optimization, paving the way for efficient design of large-scale, multi-wavelength, and multi-mode nanophotonic devices.

The Challenge in Inverse Design
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Adjoint-based optimization has revolutionized the design of nanophotonic devices, enabling automated generation of compact, broadband components with remarkable performance. However, a critical limitation remains: the majority of computation time is spent on solving large sparse linear systems during forward and adjoint simulations.

Breaking Bandwidth Barriers in Integrated Photonics: Design Filters Over 100 nm Wide!

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Integrated optical filters are crucial, but achieving truly broadband performance (think >100 nm) with low loss, sharp edges, and design flexibility has been a major hurdle. Rings, MZIs, and AWGs often hit bandwidth ceilings or FSR limitations, while other approaches can be lossy or complex.

What if you could bypass these limits?

In our latest work published in Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT), we introduce a new way to design and build ultra-broadband silicon photonic filters using adiabatic optimization of coupled waveguides.

Prof. Magden Wins Science Academy’s GEBİP 2021 Award

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Prof. Emir Salih Magden has been awarded the 2021 GEBİP (Outstanding Young Scientist Award) by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA). The award ceremony was held at the Presidential Complex in Ankara on December 28, 2021. Pictured is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presenting the award to Prof. Magden.

The TÜBA-GEBİP program, established in 2001, is one of Turkey’s most prestigious honors for academics. It aims to support brilliant and promising young scientists younger than 40 who have distinguished themselves through their research. The program provides awardees with financial research funds and academic support for a period of three years, fostering a synergistic environment for the next generation of researchers to contribute to the scientific development of the country.

Integrated Broadband Optical Filters

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Our work on integrated broadband optical filters, now published in Nature Communications, provides a novel design and demonstration of optical filters that can simultaneously achieve broadband response and a sharp roll-off. The lead author of the paper describing integrated filter design and measurements is Prof. Emir Salih Mağden, along with colleagues from MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. The article is featured on MIT’s homepage on August 3rd 2018.

Pictured is a 3D-render of scattered light from the integrated waveguides comprising the filter, captured at two different wavelengths directed towards the two separate output ports of the filter.

Prof. Magden awarded TUBITAK Career Development Grant

Sat, 28 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Scientific and Technological Research Council Of Turkey (TUBITAK) recently announced that Prof. Emir Salih Magden has been awarded the Career Development Grant (TUBITAK 3501). The grant is one of 7 awarded this year in the Electrical/Electronics/Informatics research category.

The grant will cover the development, fabrication, and characterization of next-generation integrated photonic devices for a period of 36 months.

From TUBITAK homepage: “The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) is the leading agency for management, funding and conduct of research in Turkey. It was established in 1963 with a mission to advance science and technology, conduct research, and support Turkish researchers. The council is an autonomous institution and is governed by a scientific board whose members are selected from prominent scholars from universities, industry, and research institutions.”

Prof. Magden wins Science Academy’s Young Scientist Award (BAGEP 2018)

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Prof. Magden is one of the 39 recipients of Science Academy’s Young Scientist Award (BAGEP 2018), and one of the 3 recipients in the field of electrical engineering. The awards ceremony was held at Bilgi University on April 27th 2018. Pictured is Koç University President Prof. Umran İnan presenting the award to Prof. Mağden.

The Science Academy rewards the most brilliant and promising academics younger than 40 with the prestigious Young Scientist Award program. The BAGEP program provides award-winning young academics with research funds for a period of two years.

The Optical Society Interviews Prof. Magden at OFC 2018

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Prof. Magden shares why he finds working with light so inspiring, in this interview with the Optical Society of America (OSA). The interview was filmed at Optical Fibers Conference (OFC) held in San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California, USA.

The interview is a part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of OSA’s Celebrating All Members (CAM) events where frequent attendees of meetings and congresses get an opportunity to share their stories. Click here to access the full video.