In honour of his outstanding contribution to ECE’s curriculum and his dedication to enriching learning experiences, Professor Lukas Chrostowski received the UBC Killam Teaching Prize today.
Perhaps his most notable contribution to UBC is his work developing a curriculum in the rapidly evolving field of silicon nanophotonics. In collaboration with Professor Nicolas Jaeger and CMC Microsystems, Prof. Chrostowski developed a course that enables students to create innovative designs using world-leading industrial foundry fabrication processes. This unique access to a cutting-edge fabrication foundry, allows students to conduct innovative research. Many students obtained peer-review publications as a result of the course. Students gain familiarity in design, fabrication, and testing in an area of photonics that is destined to play an increasingly important, and ubiquitous role in optical circuitry. The course in available nationwide using a blended design, incorporating face-to-face and online teaching and learning. The course has provided training to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-doctoral researchers and people from industry.
The core to this pedagogical approach is to provide students with an opportunity to design, fabricate and test an integrated-optic circuit or system. In this way students fully experience the design cycle. This is a powerful tool in promoting active student engagement in the learning process. By requiring a student to design a device, where the success of the design will be validated by experiment, the student’s motivation to learn the material is dramatically enhanced since the stakes are much higher. This encourages the student to question all assumptions in the models and determine their applicability to the problem as well as learn about process limitations and issues surrounding manufacturing in a real world, industry-class fabrication process. Finally, the students complete the design cycle by performing experiments with their fabricated devices, comparing with theory, and writing a final project paper.
Prof. Chrostowski has created similar programs in the United States and has expanded Silicon Nanaphotonics curriculum int
o the undergraduate program at UBC. “I expect that our undergraduate students, who have design and experimentation experience in photonics will have a competitive edge in applying for industry positions and for graduate admissions. Most importantly, they will have the critical thinking, presentation, and communication skills, together with design experience, necessary to become leaders in their chosen professions.”
Prof. Chrostowski takes an innovative approach to all of his teaching and fosters students’ engagement with faculty members and their peers. “Direct interaction with faculty members is essential to the undergraduate experience. I incorporate the research performed at the university into lectures to encourage students to seek research projects with my colleagues, and strive to involve undergraduate students in my own lab’s experimental and theoretical work. My own undergraduate research experience working with a professor jump-started my research career.”
Find out more:
Silicon Nanophotonics Fabrication: An innovative graduate course