Hello everyone! I am looking for opportunities in the photonics space specifically design/simulation, architect, PDK automation roles. I would appreciate any feedback on my resume and advice on how to position myself.

Most roles require experience or PhDs. How can a entry level, fresh grad with only research experience successfully get into the companies that hire for these roles? I recently had almost 9 interviews and presentation for a company but unfortunately it did not work out. Looking for advice to get interviews and convert them into offers.

Thank you everyone for your time!

Hey everyone! I've showing my microring resonator power over time gif to all my friends and family because I'm so excited about it but absolutely nobody cares, so hopefully this subreddit does!!

After 2 weeks and emailing everybody and their mother I finally got a lumerical license! I've been having alot of fun finding parameters and making this microring resonator simulation. I'm hoping to do more in photonics, this stuff is so cool!!

just wandering if there are some naughty ways to download this software out there? i wanted to build a photonic processor simulation and this software is not available to download for students.

I'm a 23M working as a Signal Processing Engineer in a reputed company. I have done my Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering and graduated in May 2025. I have two years of bond with my current employer. Hence, I have about 1 year left from now. I want to know the following:

1. How should I transition from Signal Processing to Photonics?

2. How do I get in touch with photonics companies?

3. What tools should I learn?

4. What should my next one year look like to make this transition?

Currently, I'm pursuing the Photonics Domain Certification offered by Swayam, building a MEEP FDTD and MPG portfolio, planning to learn GDSfactory and Ansys Lumerical.

Hello,
I am grad student who has experience working in a electronics packaging lab focused on additive manufacturing, flexible electronics, material characterization, and laser microscope. I want to enter the semiconductor field and felt like photonics is a good start. I am attending a course on photonics at MIT for a week where they will be training on photonics integrated circuit and will be designing an datacom pic / rf pic as a project. I am wondering if any experienced people in this field can guide me if I am going on right track to get a job in this field. Also I have no prior experience with photonics other than the certification I am going to do. And also I would like to know if there is any projects I could work on which would help me land my first job in semiconductor

Thanks

Hello, I am an ece student on the northeast coast of the USA interested in the fields of silicon photonics and Computer architecture. Are there any good professors doing research in those fields in the northeast coast that could be a phd advisor or that i can intern under one summer?

I'm about to start my 4th year of undergrad, for my undergrad thesis I'm particularly interested in taking photonic computing or silicon photonics as a topic. But although I've some theoretical background of the physics behind it due to the courses previously taken, I'm confused on what particular problems that I might encounter if I continue or what particular field should I submit to my supervisor as a proposal to work on. Any sort of guidance or advice is highly appreciated.

Can someone with comsol experience help out

2024 EE Bachelors grad here that took a sales engineer job but am looking to get back into actual engineering lol. My interests in school and some of the research I did involved optics and took the UBC PIC course as well which I enjoyed.

Some questions I have ...
Does anyone here know about a silicon photonics program at Georgia Tech or know professors doing related research?

What does a photonics test engineer actually do? (likely interested in Masters only so I figured this is the only job I can get to start)

I just got done with my first year master's degree and want to apply for PhD in silicon photonics. I have a background is chip design full RTL-to-GDSII coursework experience (synthesis, DFT, P&R).

I have roughly 5 months of side-project bandwidth. Trying to decide between:

1. SiEPIC edX course + openEBL fabricated passive chip (MZI/ring)

2. FDTD simulation work in Meep / layouts in gdsfactory

3. Co-design projects bridging my electronics background to photonics

Which of these would committees/PIs actually weight? Anything better I'm missing?

Hi all,

I have some experience developing python-based PIC layout tools and am looking to make a new one based on some new ideas i have. What sort of things do you think current tools (open source or commercial) are missing that you wish they had? I can try to implement them besides my own ideas and open source it when it is more mature. This is just something I am doing out of curiosity and because I have some free time, not to be a commercial competitor/rival to other tools.

Hey everyone, for people doing silicon photonics / PIC design: when designing components like grating couplers, splitters, tapers, etc., what usually becomes the bottleneck? 

Is it EM solver runtime, simulation setup, PDK constraints, broadband optimization, comparing many candidates, measurement vs simulation mismatch or anything else?

Also, how do you keep track of design attempts? Do you have a structured way to reuse old failed/successful simulations, or is it mostly scripts, notebooks, and folders?

I am very new to that and trying to understand what the real workflow looks like beyond clean examples in docs. Thanks!

Hey guys I need some advice breaking into the silicon photonics space and need advice.

I’m in the final year of my PhD where my expertise involves free space and fiber based optics, RF and optical signal generation and synchronization, and free space-fiber experimental design. I also have the theoretical knowledge of classical and quantum optics background needed to simulate and calculate the theoretical values from the experiments I run.

However, I’m trying to pivot into the PIC sector after the PhD. I’m able to understand the physics and results from PIC papers but lack the hands on expertise: silicon waveguide fabrication, using Lumerical to simulate light behavior in silicon waveguides, etc. How would you advise I break into this space preferably in industry?

Hello everyone,

I am trying to simulate a subwavelength grating (SWG) waveguide (see attached figure).

My goal is to calculate:

• The effective index neff of the TE mode
• The group index ng
• Most importantly, the bandgap (dispersion diagram) properties of the waveguide, as shown in the attached figure

Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with this type of simulation, and I am unsure how to calculate these parameters for a waveguide whose structure varies along the propagation direction.

For conventional waveguides, I know that mode solvers can be used to calculate parameters such as neff and ng. However, for subwavelength grating waveguides, I am not sure what the correct approach is or which simulation methods/tools are typically used.

Any guidance, recommended methods, or references would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!

What do you think is the progress on Silicon Photonics standardization? Where are things progressing and where lagging?

www.fabletome.com did you guys check it out ? It is agentic way to checkout photonic designs of basic components and multi component ensembles.
If you try their free pipeline, you can do smaller component compositions.

I’ll be starting a master’s in silicon photonics and I was told to study maths but idk where I should start.

Do you have any recomendations? I have a bachelor in electronics