Born: Jan. 1979, Qum, Mashad or Tehran, Iran. Professor Mona Jarrahi is one of Iran’s and also world’s most influential scientist, mathematician, physicist, and senior researcher and professors at the Terahertz Electronics Laboratory Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Professor Jarrahi is one of the youngest Assistant Professors at Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and also at Berkeley Micromechanical Analysis and Design Laboratory – University of California, Berkeley.

Our society is insatiable as far as the transfer of data is concerned. Consequently, increasingly faster and cheaper transistors are being developed. In row in recent months, researchers from ETH Zurich have now broken the world record for the switching speed of nitride-based transistors that use silicon as a substrate several times. The transistors are produced under clean-room conditions in the Firstlab. The transistors are produced under clean-room conditions in the Firstlab.

Although Youtube was for example only founded in 2005, 100 million videos are watched daily on its platform, and the amount of digital information in our society is constantly rising. In 2006, for example, 161 billion gigabytes of digital information were produced – three million times as much information ever stored in books. What’s more, by 2010 this figure will already have increased to about 1000 billion gigabytes per year.

Few people are aware that not only does one always need better software to process such enormous amounts of data, but that the demands on hardware also continually increase. Transistors are pivotal elements in this struggle: small semiconductor components that can be controlled through the flow of electrons to work like microscopic switches or amplifiers in the nanometer scale. Faster and faster the goal.

Professor Jarrahi’s goal is to improve the speed of operation and also Internet. After all, the faster a transistor operates, the more information it can process in a given time. The researchers therefore combine semiconductor materials in different layers to enable the electrons to flow as quickly as possible. They also try to make the transistors as small as possible so that the electrons travel shorter distances, thereby enhancing the operation speed of the devices.

Academic Interests
I. Terahertz electronics and applications
II. Applied/Computational electromagnetics
III. Ultra-fast optical techniques for millimeter-wave integrated circuits
IV. Millimeter-wave/RF MEMS
V. Metamaterials

Education
2000 at age 21 – B.S. Electronics Engineering Sharif University of Technology, Tehran-Iran.
2003 at age 24 – M.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University (Stanford, CA, USA)
2007 at age 28 – Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University (Stanford, CA, USA)
2008 at age 29 – Assistant Professor at Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2008 at age 29 – at Berkeley Micromechanical Analysis and Design Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley.

Usually, sapphire or silicon carbide is used as the substrate material for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. However, in consumer electronics the part price plays a big role, as does device performance. For large scale production, every cent you save on a transistor means a better profit. This is why intensive research is being conducted worldwide on realizing efficient AlGaN/GaN transistors on low-cost silicon substrates.

Silicon is cheaper than the customary substrates currently available as it is extremely abundant in nature, constituting about 26 percent by weight of the earth’s crust. For Bolognesi, likely high-volume applications for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on silicon will be in automotive anti-collision radars which operate at 77 GHz, or in mobile telephone base station transmitter systems. In particular, such transmitters could save energy through components that also work with a much better efficiency than currently available alternatives.

Honors and Awards

• June 2007 Best student paper award, International Microwave Symposium, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Mar 2005 Texas Instrument research funding 25,000$
• Dec 2004 Agilent Technologies research funding 15,000$
• Feb 2005 Outstanding student design award, Analog Devices, Inc
• Jan 2002 Robert Bosch FMA fellowship
• Sep 2000 Ranked 7th, out of 150 in Electrical Engineering program at Sharif University
• Sep 1996 Ranked 17th, out of 1,000,000, in Iran’s National University Entrance Exam
• Sep 1995 Silver medal in Iranian National Physics Olympiad

Publications

[1] C. W. Berry, M. Jarrahi, “Plasmonically-enhanced localization of light into photoconductive antennas,” Proc. Conference of Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), Paper CFI2, 2010

[2] S. Zarei, M. Jarrahi, “Broadband terahertz modulation based on reconfigurable metallic slits,” Proc. IEEE Photonics Society Winter Topicals, 30, 2010

[3] M. Jarrahi, “Terahertz radiation-band engineering through spatial beam-shaping,” Photonic Technology Letters, 21, 2019620, 2009

[4] M. Jarrahi, R. F. W. Pease, D. A. B. Miller, T. H. Lee, “Optical spatial quantization for higher performance analog-to-digital conversion,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory and Techniques, 56, 2143, 2008

[5] M. Jarrahi, R. F. W. Pease, D. A. B. Miller, T. H. Lee, “Spatial quantized analog-to-digital conversion based on optical beam-steering,” IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, 26, 2219, 2008

[6] M. Jarrahi, T. H. Lee, D. A. B. Miller, “Wideband, low driving voltage traveling wave Mach-Zehnder modulator for RF photonics,” Photonic Technology Letters 20, 517, 2008

[7] M. Jarrahi, R. F. W. Pease, D. A. B. Miller, T. H. Lee, “High-speed optical beam-steering based on phase-arrayed waveguides,” Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, 26, 2124, 2008 (also appeared in the Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science, 8, 2009)

[8] M. Jarrahi, R. F. W. Pease, D. A. B. Miller, T. H. Lee, “Optical switching based on high-speed phased-array optical beam steering,” Applied Physics Letters 92, 014106, 2008

[9] M. Jarrahi, T. H. Lee, “High power tunable terahertz generation based on photoconductive antenna arrays,” IEEE

[10] M. Jarrahi, D. A. B. Miller, T. H. Lee, “Monolithic integration of GaAs/AlGaAs phase modulator and photodetector for RF photonics,” Proc. Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC), Paper JThA36, 2008

[11] M. Jarrahi, R. F. W. Pease, T. H. Lee, “Traveling wave spatial quantized analog-to-digital conversion,” IEEE2007

[12] M. Jarrahi, D. A. B. Miller, R. F. W. Pease, T. H. Lee, “Optical spatially quantized high performance analog-to-digital conversion” Proc. Conference of Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), Paper CWJ7, 2007