User:LieslHaliburton/sandbox

Draft:Julie Fouquet

Julie Fouquet is an American scientist and inventor with over 50 US patents in areas including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), optical switching, optical sensors and radio frequency magnetic isolation devices. She was the lead inventor of the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform, a technology that directs complex signals traveling through an array of 32 optical fibers into an independent array of 32 fibers as needed for fiber optic communications network management.

Education[ edit]
Fouquet earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University, mapping astrophysical masers. She earned MS and PhD degrees in applied physics from Stanford University, researching dynamics of light emission from quantum well semiconductor structures used for semiconductor lasers and other devices.

Research and career[ edit]
Fouquet joined Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in 1985, then worked at Agilent Laboratories (after the Hewlett-Packard/Agilent split) starting in 1999 and Avago Technologies (resulting from the sale of Agilent’s Semiconductor Product Group) starting in 2005. She held a variety of technical and managerial positions at these corporations. She is now co-founder and CEO of 3newable LLC, a company working in renewable energy and sensor technologies for marine applications.

Optoelectronic devices and optical material characterization were Fouquet’s major research areas until 1995. She invented specialty semiconductor emitters that played key roles in Agilent's (now Keysight's) optical instruments. Using optical techniques including time-resolved photoluminescence, she analyzed the optical properties of III-V compound semiconductor materials for development of a wide range of devices, including LEDs now sold by Lumileds for stop lights and automotive signaling lights.

In 1995 Fouquet invented a photonic switch that uses bubbles to redirect light between waveguides in a planar lightwave circuit, later known as the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform. Fouquet led the multidisciplinary research team that broke performance records for compact optical switches in 1998 and 2000,   and managed technology development in the 75-person division Agilent created to commercialize this technology. Fouquet's role in this work was profiled in The New Yorker Magazine and Harvard Magazine, and she was named a "Leading Innovator" by US News and World Report Magazine. The photonic switch combines a wafer containing optical waveguides in planar lightwave circuits with a silicon wafer containing heaters based on Hewlett-Packard's inkjet technology. In a 32x32 switch, two arrays of 32 parallel waveguides each cross at 1024 points. A trench previously etched in the waveguide at each of these crosspoints is filled with a fluid whose refractive index matches that of the waveguide, so that typically optical signals continue across the trench and into the waveguide segment on the other side. If the optical signals in a the waveguide need to be switched into a crossing waveguide, a heater built on a mating substrate at the appropriate crosspoint is turned on to generate a bubble. The refractive index difference between the waveguide and the bubble creates total internal reflection at the edge of the trench, and the light is reflected into the crossing waveguide. Rerouting all 32 inputs into 32 independent outputs requires just 32 heaters to be turned on. All of the parts of the switch are aligned during manufacture, so that - unlike some micromirror-based switches - no active optical alignment is required during operation.

Fouquet next led an optical imaging sensor group that developed new technologies for low-cost eye detection, free-space pointing devices (like a three-dimensional mouse), and laser-based optical mice.

At Avago (now Broadcom) she developed a new RF magnetic transducer technology to send data across electrical isolation barriers that is the basis of the ACML-74x0 product line. She also worked on DC-to-DC power conversion at 60 MHz, acoustic GHz oscillators based on film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) technology, and optical sensor s.

At 3newable, Fouquet works on wave energy conversion and optics-based anti-biofouling technologies.

Awards[ edit]
Fouquet's awards include


 * IEEE Fellow, 2004, “for contributions to optical switch and light-emitting device technologies”
 * Barney M Oliver Prize for Innovation, Agilent Laboratories, 2000
 * Leading Innovator for 2001, US News and World Report
 * Technical Achievement Award, 1991, Hewlett-Packard Technical Women's Conference