Volker J. Sorger

- Title:
- Associate Professor
- Office:
- SEH 6590 | Office hours: F: 8:30 – 10:00 am
- Phone:
- 202-994-7186
- Email:
- [email protected]
- Website:
- sorger.seas.gwu.edu
Volker Sorger is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of the Orthogonal Physics Enabled Nanophotonics (OPEN) Lab. His research areas include opto-electronics, nanophotonics, intelligent information processing, and photonic AI systems. Among his breakthroughs are the first micrometer-compact GHz modulator, strainoptronics photodetector, plasmon laser, and innovations such as multilevel photonic memory and photonic tensor core processor. For his work, Dr. Sorger has received multiple awards, among them are the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (YIP), the Hegarty Innovation Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences award of the year. Dr. Sorger is the editor-in-chief of NANOPHOTONICS, and holds the position of the OSA Division Chair for ‘Photonics and Opto-electronics, serving at the boards of OSA & SPIE. He is a senior member of IEEE, OSA & SPIE, and the founder of Optelligence LLC.
- Ph.D., The University of California - Berkeley, 2011
- Management of Technology, Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, 2011
- M.A., The University of Texas, 2005
- Photonic AI
- Analog Photonic Accelerators
- Nanophotonics
- Optoelectronics
Honors (selected)
2019 PECASE - Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists & Engineers
2019 2x DURIP Awards from ARO and AFOSR
2019 SPIE Community Campion-of-the-year
2018 BEST Paper Award ‘Highest expected future impact’ at the 2018 Cognitive Computing Conference
2017 Early Career Award, Vice President for Research GWU
2017 Gold Medal, 14th US-Korea Forum on Nanotechnology
2017 Senior Member Distinction: OSA, SPIE, IEEE
2016 Early Tenure Promotion
2016 Hegarty Innovations Prize
2016 Dean’s Outstanding Research Award GWU
2014 AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award
2014 Venture Competition Winner (2x): Clean-Tech Open South-East, and GWU Business Competition
2014 Annual ECE Faculty Award GWU
2011 Gold Award - Material Research Society
2011 Newport Travel Grant
2010 National Academy of Sciences (NAS): Annual Paper Award
2009 OSA Emil Wolf Prize
2009 BACUS/SPIE Scholarship
2009 Finalist European Space Agency (ESA) Astronaut Selection (top 0.2%)
2007 Intel Corporation PhD Graduate Fellowship
2008 SPIE Scholarship
2006 Intel Corporation CTG Research Award
2005 Hölderlin Stipend
2002 German National Academic Foundation Fellow (by German President)
1998 Winner Science Competition: “Jugend-Forscht”
Distinctions
Editorships: Editor-in-Chief of NANOPHOTONICS (IF=7.5), Guest Editor Optics Materials Express
Leadership: Division Chair ‘Optoelectronics and Photonics’ (OSA); Technical Group Development Chair (OSA); Technical Group Chair (OSA); Symposia and Scholarship Committee (SPIE); National Photonics Initiative Task Force
Conference Chair: CLEO 2020 Neural Networks, Advanced Photonics Congress, Photonics West (3x times), Optics & Photonics (2x times), MRS Spring & Fall, OSA Incubators, SPIE PW & O&P (multiple).
Journal Reviewer: NPG, Science, ASC, IEEE, OSA, API
Honors: Senior Member Status (OSA, SPIE, IEEE). Fellow of German National Academic Foundation
- Plasmon Lasers at Deep Sub-Wavelength Scale Application (US Patent No. 8,509,276) - Licensed for $2,000,000 to a South Korean major electronics manufacturer.
- Silicon-based, Broadband, Waveguide-Integrated Electro-Optical Switch (US Patent No. 9,529,158).
- Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Interconnects with Intrinsic and Extrinsic Modulation Option (US Patent No. 10,256,600).
- The Reconfigurable Optical Co-Processor (US Patent No. 10,318,680).
- All Optical Fast Fourier Transform on Chip with Heating Tunability Design, Simulation, Fabrication, and Performance Analysis. (US Patent No. 10,481,463).
- Plasmonic mode III-V laser as on-chip light source (US Patent No. 10,374,389) (filed jointly with IBM)
- Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Non-blocking Wide Spectrum WDM On-chip Router (US Patent No. 10,564,512).
- Graphene –Based Plasmonic Slot Electro-Optical Modulator (US Patent No. 10,663,766).
- Two-Dimensional Material Printer and Transfer System and Method for Atomically Layered Materials (US Patent Appl. No. 16/121.156).
- Residue Arithmetic Nanophotonic System (US Patent Appl. No. 16/284.762).
- Image Symmetry Detection via leaky-firing Spiking Neuromorphic Networks (US Patent Appl. No. 16/266.765).
- Optical Convolutional Neural Network Accelerator (US Patent Appl. No. 16/507,854).
- Optical Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC) (US Patent Appl. No. 16/439,268).
- Transparent Conductive Oxide-Based Mach-Zehnder Integrated Modulator in Silicon Photonics. (US Patent Appl. No. 16/545.733).
- Photonic Tensor Core Processor (PCT International Appl. No. PCT/US2020/028516 – not yet published).
- CMOS Compatible Light Emitting Tunnel Junction (LETJ) (PCT International Appl. No. PCT/US2020/032347 – not yet published).
- Low loss multistate Photonic Nonvolatile Memories (Provisional Appl. No. 63/026.451 - not yet published).
- Dual Functional Broadband On-Chip Optical Modulator Detector (Provisional Appl. No. 62/633.382 - not yet published).
- Strain-Engineered Integrated MoTe2 Photodetectors for High Responsivity (Provisional Appl. No. 62/938,116 - not yet published).
- 2D material-based Spiral Solar Cell (Provisional Appl. No. 62/146.590 - not yet published).