Avi Zadok
Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Technion, Haifa, IsraelFor pioneering optomechanical sensing outside optical fibers.
Avi Zadok is a highly dedicated mentor. He shares, “The advising of students is a goal. It's an objective in its own right, and it stands side by side with the research itself. This has been a passion and a major commitment for me.” Specifically, Avi hopes to guide and train his students to pursue their individual goals. In his daily work, he tries to inspire his colleagues to view mentoring and advising as he does. He rejects the idea that students work to support their advisors’ agendas and instead finds ways to inspire his students to follow their own paths.
This sort of guidance makes sense following Avi’s early career in industry. After earning a master’s degree, Avi went straight into industry, where he worked for nearly ten years before going back to school to pursue a PhD. At that time, he worked in research and development and led a team of 25 people. The conditions at that previous position were highly stressful, and Avi had to learn how to manage his group to make progress effectively. While he could do research, he felt his role was first as a manager.
Eventually, Avi grew curious about academia and decided to take leave from his position, intending to return after he finished the PhD. His education so inspired him that he changed plans and stuck with academia. He knew he’d made the right choice when he was accepted to a postdoc position at Caltech, USA, which he enthusiastically accepted. Since then, he has been at Bar Ilan University in Israel and is now at Technion.
Avi’s research throughout his career has been focused on two platforms: optical fibers and photonic integrated circuits, primarily on silicon. He calls these “everyman’s platforms” because they are widely available and relatively cheap, enabling anyone to use them regardless of their means. His group aims to “play tricks” on these platforms and to push them to do unique and exciting things. Most recently, they have been working on coupling light waves with sound waves, or “optomechanics.” He shares, “There are complex interrelations between these waves. If you somehow introduce light and sound into a medium, there will be very interesting coupling between them and influences of one or the other. This is what we are studying and employing: ways to launch, induce light and sound in the same sorts of platforms, and see what they can do together.” The group always sticks to what is available, keeping things simple.
Right now is a particularly exciting time for this technology. Avi shares that within the last five years or so, there has been an explosion of applications for silicon photonics. This means that now his group could design a device and have an outside company manufacture it, as opposed to creating it for themselves in university cleanroom facilities. This is how electronics research in academia has worked for decades. Avi comments, “This is changing our way of work drastically. The possibilities that are being opened in that way are just fantastic. I think it's for the best, and I'm really excited about that.”
Avi advises anyone interested in pursuing science: "Don’t forget to have fun!” He reminds his students that life should be about enjoying what you do. There are plenty of ways to make better money, but for Avi, the role of professor is richly rewarding. He observes younger colleagues getting overly concerned with tenure, winning grants, and getting published, and they forget that they once dreamed of being professors. He comments, “Of course, we work hard and deliver, but this is not the job to do if you want to be miserable every day…this is a dream job!”
Photo courtesy of Avi Zadok
Profile written by Samantha Hornback
