Irena Knezevic
Patricia and Michael Splinter Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Seminar: Coupled Simulation of Light, Charge, and Heat at the Nanoscale
Abstract: Time-dependent nonequilibrium transport in semiconductor nanostructures and quantum materials offers a number of exciting basic-science challenges, as well as real-world applications. Today, we understand a great deal about how to describe the transport of charge carriers in these systems, provided that the optical or electrical excitations are low in both intensity and frequency. However, transport under high-intensity or high-frequency excitation is very challenging to understand and simulate, because it involves the interplay of three systems – charge carriers, lattice, and electromagnetic fields – driving one another. In this talk, we will present recent developments of efficient computational techniques that couple electron and phonon transport with full electrodynamics, and their use for predicting the behavior of photonics, plasmonic, and energy-harvesting devices.
About the Speaker: Irena Knezevic is the Patricia and Michael Splinter Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research group works on problems in theoretical and computational nanoscience. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers on topics spanning quantum transport in semiconductor devices, thermal transport at the nanoscale and nanostructured thermoelectrics, quantum cascade lasers, nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics, nonlinear optics, and exciton transport in photovoltaics. Some of Knezevic’s professional recognitions include the NSF CAREER and AFOSR YIP awards, the UW-Madison Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and the American Physical Society Outstanding Referee Award. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of the International Workshop of Computational Nanotechnology, the Steering Committee for the Wigner Initiative, and IEEE Nanotechnology Council's Modeling and Simulation Technical Committee. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Computational Electronics and AIP Advances.
Host: Mona Zebarjadi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and materials science and engineering.