Staff Directory

Dr. Yung Kim is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, working in Prof. Keren Bergman’s Lightwave Research Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from KAIST under the supervision of Prof. Bumki Min. His previous research focused on programmable MEMS photonic integrated circuits and quantum/classical photonic simulators. He is now exploring optical interconnects for high-performance computing and photonic AI accelerators.

Prof. Xiang (Alex) Meng is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. He earned his B.Sc/B.Eng from the University of Saskatchewan and his MS/PhD from Columbia University. His research spans photonic devices, coherent optical systems, and data center technologies. In addition, Prof. Meng is the Technical Director of JUMP 2.0's CUbiC Center and an active member of the Technical Committees for Optica/IEEE conferences.

Tobias Zypman received his B.S.E. and M.E. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Princeton University. At Princeton, he conducted research on neuromorphic computing in the Lightwave Communications Research Lab. Tobias is currently pursuing his PhD in the Electrical Engineering department at Columbia University, with interests in photonic systems and optoelectronic devices. Tobias also enjoys playing and watching soccer, reading fiction, and learning about other fields of science.

Ryan Baum earned both his B.S. (2024) and M.S. (2025) in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. While at UCSB, he designed and implemented an optical test setup to characterize high power heterojunction phototransistors. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, where he is a member of the Lightwave Research Laboratory. His research focuses on developing silicon photonic integrated circuits for scalable systems.

Priyanka received her Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University. The former was completed under a U.S. Department of Energy fellowship in Integrated Circuit design for High-Energy Physics (HEPIC). She has previously interned at national laboratories (FNAL, PPPL), university laboratories, and in industry (Lockheed-Martin, Intel). At Columbia, Priyanka joined the Lightwave Research Laboratory in 2023 to pursue her PhD under Prof. Keren Bergman. Her research interests intersect photonic and electrical integrated circuits.

Nathaniel Nauman received his B.S. in Computer Engineering (2022) and M.S. in Electrical Engineering (2023) from Purdue University with minors in Math and Arabic. He is an NSF GRFP Fellow and a recipient of the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship for Bengali. At Purdue, his research included developing probabilistic computing architectures on FPGA for p-bit accelerators under his advisor Professor Supriyo Datta. Nathaniel is pursuing his PhD at Columbia University with interests in photonic integrated circuit design and device physics.

Michael Cullen received his B.E. in Engineering from Dartmouth College in 2022, and B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2021. At Amherst College, Michael completed his undergraduate physics thesis in an AMO lab led by Prof. Larry Hunter where he studied new excitation schemes for improving optical cycling in TlF. He joined the Lightwave Research Lab at Columbia University in 2022 in pursuit of the M.S./Ph.D program, with interests in silicon photonic systems and optoelectronic devices.

Madeleine Glick received her Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia University after which she joined the Department of Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Lausanne, Switzerland, continuing research in electro-optic effects in III-V materials. From 1992 to 1996, she was a Research Associate with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. From 2002-2011 Madeleine was Principal Engineer at Intel (Intel Research Cambridge UK, Intel Research Pittsburgh, PA) leading research on optical interconnects for data centers. Her research interests are in applications of photonic devices and optical interconnects to computing systems. Madeleine is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Senior Member of IEEE and OSA.

Keren Bergman is the Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University where she also serves as the Faculty Director of the Columbia Nano Initiative. Prof. Bergman received the B.S. from Bucknell University in 1988, and the M.S. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1994 from M.I.T. all in Electrical Engineering. At Columbia, Bergman leads the Lightwave Research Laboratory encompassing multiple cross-disciplinary programs at the intersection of computing and photonics. Bergman is the recipient of the 2016 IEEE Photonics Engineering Award and is a Fellow of Optica (Optical Society of America) and IEEE.

Kaylx Jang graduated with his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Material Science from the University of California, Irvine in 2020.  He spent two summers at Ayar Labs in the Test and Measurement Department, designing test benches with sub-micron precision alignment equipment and is currently engaged in a Nokia co-op as part of a silicon photonic design team (formerly called Elenion).  His current interests include entrepreneurship in the areas of silicon photonic devices and systems.

James Venditto is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he obtained his B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a concentration in Semiconductors and Nanotechnology. During his time at Notre Dame, James performed undergraduate research with Professor Gregory Snider in the area of adiabatic microprocessor design, and also participated in a summer research program with NYU Tandon's Sounds of New York City environmental monitoring project. At Columbia, James is pursuing his M.S./Ph.D as part of the Lightwave Research Lab. His research interests include photonic device and circuit design, with applications for sustainability.

Isabel received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. She has experience in RF integrated circuit design and has interned at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where she worked on analyzing laser frequency noise. She joined the Lightwave Research Laboratory in 2025 as an NSF GRFP Fellow to pursue her M.S./Ph.D. with a research focus on photonic integrated circuit design.

Brett George holds a B.A. in Physics from the College of the Holy Cross, as well as a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. During his time at Holy Cross, his research focused on developing gravitational microlensing models for circumbinary systems. Before joining the LRL, Brett worked for two years as a Systems Engineer at Draper Laboratory while completing his degrees. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. with the LRL, concentrating on the application of optical interconnects and networks using photonics in high-performance computing systems and data centers.

Alex received his Bachelors of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Vanderbilt University in 2024, Summa Cum Laude. He is an NSF GRFP fellow and a Columbia University Presidential fellow. His past research at Vanderbilt primarily focused on device-level photonics, and he is excited to continue this research path and expand into circuit and system/network level design at Columbia. For his research and academic goals, Alex aims to help push the limits of current applications of photonic devices for data communication and computation, while also discovering novel areas to apply photonics.