Aseema Mohanty named Ankur and Mari Sahu Assistant Professor

The School of Engineering is excited to announce Aseema Mohanty as the new Ankur and Mari Assistant Professor. The Ankur and Mari Sahu Professorship was established in 2019 as an endowed junior professorship in Tufts University’s School of Engineering. Generously funded by Ankur, E91, A22P, and Mari, A22P, Sahu, the professorship aids in the recruitment and retention of outstanding junior faculty in the School of Engineering.  

Mohanty received her Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and her B.S. in electrical science and engineering from MIT. After she completed her Ph.D. in 2017, she pursued postdoctoral research at Columbia University, where she continued studying the design, fabrication, and application of silicon-based nanophotonic devices for neuroscience and quantum information systems. 

Mohanty joined Tufts in 2020 as the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in Engineering. She is the principal investigator of the Mohanty Nanophotonics Lab, which studies high-performance optical circuits at the material, device, and system level for applications in implantable and wearable biomedical devices, neuroscience, AR/VR displays, quantum information systems, and emerging computing and communications systems.  

Mohanty also received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her work on improving photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which are best known for their applications in fiber-optic cables and other areas of telecommunications. Compared to electronic circuits, PICs can transmit information more quickly, generate less heat, and have lower energy consumption. They’re often powered by infrared light, but Mohanty’s project aims to advance PICs that use light in the visible wavelength. 

As the Ankur and Mari Sahu Assistant Professor, Mohanty will continue using nanophotonics and engineered light-matter interactions to create miniaturized high-performance optical circuits that control, shape, and sense light. 

Learn more about Ankur and Mari Assistant Professor Aseema Mohanty.