I'm in my sixth year as a PhD student at Harvard University, studying Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.  I'm working in Federico Capasso's group here in optics and laser devices.  Speaking broadly, my research is in using materials engineered on the atomic scale, to generate new kinds of lasers.  More specifically, I've been working with "Quantum Cascade Lasers", which are "bandgap engineered" to give emission in broad areas of the infrared and terahertz spectrum.  Quantum Cascade Lasers are likely to have interesting applications in spectroscopy, gas and liquid sensing, pollution monitoring, medical diagnostics, and the detection of dangerous chemicals (ie. homeland security).  The focus of my work is on making Quantum Cascade Laser sources for spectroscopy and chemical sensing.

I did my undergrad at Caltech, majoring in Applied Physics.  While I was there, I worked with Axel Scherer in the Caltech Nanofabrication Group, doing a mixture of optics and nanofabrication research.  We specialized in making tiny optical structures (eg. photonic crystals) by etching samples with reactive gases and plasmas, bombarding them with ions, coating them with metals and semiconductors, and molding them into silicone rubber.

Publications:

Widely tunable single-mode quantum cascade laser source for mid-infrared spectroscopy
Benjamin G. Lee, Mikhail A. Belkin, Ross Audet, Jim MacArthur, Laurent Diehl, Christian Pflugl, Douglas Oakley, David Chapman, Antonio Napoleone, David Bour, Scott Corzine, Gloria Hofler, Jerome Faist, Federico Capasso
Applied Physics Letters 91, 231101 (2007)
-> paper was highlighted in online news coverage by Science Daily, PhysOrg, Nanotechwire, and Nanowerk.

Intra-cavity absorption spectroscopy with narrow-ridge microfluidic quantum cascade lasers
Mikhail A. Belkin, Marko Loncar, Benjamin G. Lee, Christian Pflügl, Ross Audet, Laurent Diehl, Federico Capasso, David Bour, Scott Corzine, Gloria Höfler
Optics Express 15, 11262 (2007)

Single-mode laser action in quantum cascade lasers with spiral-shaped chaotic resonators
Ross Audet, Mikhail A. Belkin, Jonathan A. Fan, Benjamin G. Lee, Kai Lin, Federico Capasso, E. E. Narimanov, D. Bour, S. Corzine, J. Zhu, and G. Hofler
Applied Physics Letters 91, 131106 (2007)

Design and fabrication of photonic crystal quantum cascade lasers for optofluidics
M. Loncar, Benjamin G. Lee, L. Diehl, Mikhail A. Belkin, Federico Capasso, M. Giovannini and J. Faist, and E. Gini
Optics Express 15, 4499 (2007)

Microfluidic tuning of distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers
L. Diehl, Benjamin G. Lee, P. Behroozi, M. Loncar, Mikhail A. Belkin, Federico Capasso, T. Aellen, D. Hofstetter, M. Beck, J. Faist
Optics Express 14, 11660 (2006)

Pulsed- and continuous-mode operation at high temperature of strained quantum-cascade lasers grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy
L. Diehl, D. Bour, S. Corzine, J. Zhu, G. Hofler Benjamin G. Lee, Christine Y. Wang, M. Troccoli, and Federico Capasso
Applied Physics Letters 88, 41102 (2006)

Room temperature continuous-wave operation of quantum-cascade lasers grown by metal organic vapour phase epitaxy
M. Troccoli, S. Corzine, D. Bour, J. Zhu, O. Assayag, L. Diehl, Benjamin G. Lee, G. Hofler, and Federico Capasso
Electronics Letters 41, 1059 (2005)