Areas
of Expertise
High power pulsed semiconductor lasers, Ultra-fast
saturable absorbers, Planar lightwave devices
(silica-on-silicon integrated optics), Nano-photonics.
Background
Dr. Nikolai Stelmakh started his technical and
scientific career early being a student of Ioffe
Physico-Technical Institute of St-Petersburg (Russia).
His first work devoted to the inertial property of
ions in superionic crystals was published in 1983. In
1985, he joined research laboratory of Nobel Laureate
Zh. I. Alferov and developed a semiconductor material
with sub-picosecond recovery time of optical
absorption and with unusually high capacity of
recombination. In 1988, he was awarded by a Silver
medal of All Union Technology Exhibition for this
work. In 1990, he joined Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France) as a Research
Scientist. During 1990 to 1996 he experimentally
demonstrated the injection seeding technique of
Q-switched laser diodes (1990), “chirped” mode-locking
of diode laser with record 160fs 100W pulses (1992),
and Q-switched laser diode array with pulse energy
near of 1-microjoule (1996). He had an extensive
funding experience in France in defense and commercial
areas including prestigious Ultimatech and RNRT
programs. In 1998, he produced a series of articles
investigating the high recombination capacity of
semiconductor materials irradiated by super-heavy
ions. Up to 2000, he was a co-leader of RNRT project
ASTRE united CNRS, Alcatel and CNET to develop an all
optical non-linear filter for noise reduction in
telecommunication lines. In 2000, he was promoted to a
position of the Director of Research of CNRS and he
was awarded by a Blondel medal for his contribution to
the development of ultra-fast optical components for
telecommunications. In the past 4 years, prior to his
association with UTA, he moved in United States and
served as the Vice-President of Technology for
Applied WDM Inc, a company founded by the pioneer
of heterostructure lasers and silicon optical bench
technology Dr. Rudolf Kazarinov. He developed a new
generation ultra-low-loss AWG multiplexers. He has an
extended experience in fabrication of high complexity
optical planar circuits at CMOS silicon foundry. Until
Sept 2004 he was a Visiting Associate Professor at
University of Texas Arlington working on the
development of the electro-optic PLC devices and high
power PLC laser diodes. He holds 5 patents. Dr.
Nikolai Stelmakh has authored and coauthored over 100
technical papers in journals and conference
proceedings. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.
