This summer, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to work under Justin Norman and Dr. John Bowers in the ECE department here at UCSB. My project was analyzing and characterizing quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on silicon. These lasers are a high-performance, more economic-friendly alternative to lasers grown on a III-V substrate. This hands-on research experience has been so much more than I could have dreamed of. It developed my ability to quickly absorb information and figure out what’s important for me to know. It also taught me how easy it is to get overwhelmed with the amount of information you bite off about a subject. At the beginning, I tried to consume everything that was thrown my way and very quickly got bogged down in specifics that I didn’t necessarily need to know to understand what I was doing nor function in the lab. Photonics has the capability of being an endless source of questions, which is a double edged sword: it’s the reason I’m so fascinated by the field, but also why the field seems so daunting.

My plans for this upcoming year are ambitious, to say the least, but I’m the type of person that prefers being overwhelmed and running around to being underwhelmed and bored. I plan to run for a second term as Executive Vice President of my sorority, I will be beginning my upper-division coursework for my physics major and wrapping up my Mathematical Sciences major, and I hope to continue working on my research under Dr. Bowers and learn even more than I already have this summer. I’ve started to fall in love with the field of photonics, so I want to get as involved in the field as I can, whether that be in the lab setting, attending research talks, or reading journal articles.