BIOGRAPHY
Karen is a fifth-year graduate student in Professor Ming Wu's group. She joined the group when she came to UC Berkeley in 2008, after graduating from Case Western Reserve University with a B.S. in engineering physics. In addition, she is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Integrated Silica Optomechanical Oscillators [BPN498]
Optical microring/disk resonators are the central component in many micro-optical
applications, including optomechanical devices. Optomechanical devices that use light to stimulate
mechanical resonance have applications in displacement sensing, optical mixing, and reference
oscillators. High optical Q is necessary for these applications, so we are exploring the use of
silica, which has low optical loss. So far, using a wafer-scale reflow process, we have achieved an
optical Q of 6.5 million and have observed self-excited optomechanical oscillations. We have also
fabricated nitride optomechanical rings, which have lower optical Q but better phase noise performance
for self-excited optomechanical oscillations.