Rate My Professor Michal Lipson

Michal Lipson is a physicist whose pioneering contributions to silicon photonics have transformed optical technologies. She received her B.S. in Physics in 1992, M.S. in Physics in 1994, and Ph.D. in Physics in 1998 from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. From 1999 to 2001, she held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Materials Science at MIT. In 2001, Lipson joined Cornell University as Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, advancing to Associate Professor in 2007 and Given Professor of Engineering in 2013. During her tenure at Cornell, she developed critical components for silicon photonics, including GHz-speed modulators, ring resonators, slot waveguides, and techniques for all-optical control of light on silicon chips. Notable publications from this period include "All-optical control of light on a silicon chip" (Nature, 2004), "Micrometre-scale silicon electro-optic modulator" (Nature, 2005), "Broadband Optical Parametric Gain on a Silicon Photonic Chip" (Nature, 2006), and "Guiding and Confining Light in Void Nanostructure" (Optics Letters, 2004). Her innovations enabled ultrahigh bandwidth, low-power data transfer on chip, with applications in supercomputers and optical interconnects.