Dr. Kevin Werner at BAE Systems as Principal Laser Scientist: 2019

Dr. Kevin Werner Graduated from Chowdhury Group in January 2019. His PhD thesis is titled, “Ultrafast Mid-Infrared Laser-Solid Interactions”, where he studied strong field interaction in mid-IR wavelengths with materials like Si, Ge, ZnSe, ZnS, etc. His key research and achievements involved designing and constructing the EMIR (Extreme Mid-IR) Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA), which generates femtosecond laser pulses from 2600- 4500 nm wavelengths, understanding both experimentally and theoretically, laser induced damage and ablation of Si, mid-IR laser induced extreme sub-wavelength surface structuring of Si (> 30:1 ratio between wavelength and scale of periodic structures), efficient harmonic generation from ultrafast mid-IR laser solid interactions, and demonstration of dynamic meta-surfaces with ultrafast control over resonance.