Jaekwon Lee

Bio: Jaekwon Lee is pursuing his Ph. D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he joined in August 2021 and received 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition Graduate Runner-up, 2024-2025 SPIE Optics and Photonics Educational Scholarship, 2024 Siegman International School on Lasers invitation, Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship, Nick and Kartherine Holonyak Jr. Graduate Student Award, Crosslight Best Project Award, and Promise of Excellence Fellowship throughout his studies. He is expected to graduate in May 2025 after four years of graduate studies. He received his B.S. degree in 2021 from ECE at Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea. His research interests include identifying and exploring energy-efficient electronic and photonic platforms supporting the transition towards net zero carbon emission.

Postdoctoral research project: High Efficiency Silicon Photonics for Solving the Data Center Energy Crisis. The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) entails the growing need for a larger computation model, where the latest data shows that data centers account for 6 % of the electricity consumption in the United States. Nearly half of the energy is spent on cooling due to the high density of electrical units. A promising approach to solve this issue is utilizing optical interconnects, which are bottlenecked by cost, constant loss, and temperature sensitivity. Lee’s proposed research will explore the solutions in Silicon photonics under the mentorship of Prof. Olav Solgaard and Prof. Kenneth E. Goodson. His research will reduce the cost by exploring micro-LEDs as alternative light sources, remove the fixed loss by improving the coupling between photonic components, and develop thermally stable photonic components.

Research focus: Energy Efficiency

Advisors:  Olav Solgaard - Electrical Engineering  |  Kenneth Goodson - Mechanical Engineering