Amy C. Foster, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is an expert in the nanoscale design and control of silicon-based photonic devices for optical interactions.
Foster’s Integrated Photonics Laboratory utilizes CMOS-compatible fabrication techniques to develop integrated photonic devices for next-generation communication systems at both the on-chip and off-chip level. These devices have applications in optical communications, sensing, imaging, spectroscopy, high-speed processing, precision measurement, and security. Her research has been funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Foster serves as associate editor of the OSA (Optical Society) journal Optics Express and is chair of the OSA Frontiers in Optics Photonic Integrated Devices for Computing, Sensing, and Other Applications Committee. She also serves on the IEEE Photonics Conference Optical Interconnects Committee and is a guest editor for the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics for 2021, among other appointments. Her co-authorship on “End-Fire Silicon Optical Phased Array with Half-Wavelength Spacing” was selected for the January 2018 cover of APL Photonics, adding to more than 45 journal publications in the area of silicon photonics.
In addition to a 2016 Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award, Foster is the recipient of the 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award for her work in the field of photonics and lasers. She has also received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Cornell University Fellowship. She is a member of the Optical Society and the American Physical Society. In 2018, she was an invited lecturer at OSA’s Siegman International Summer School on Lasers in Ven, Sweden.
Foster received a BS in electrical engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2003 and an MS and PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins in 2010, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell.