IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 20, NO.

4, FEBRUARY 15, 2020 1867

High-Quality Optical Ring Resonator-Based

Biosensor for Cancer Detection
Liaquat Ali, Mahmood Uddin Mohammed , Mahrukh Khan , Member, IEEE , Abdul Hamid Bin Yousuf,
and Masud H. Chowdhury , Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract —A new design of silicon photonics ring resonator

based biosensor for the detection of the diseased cell is
proposed. The proposed label-free and high-Q ring resonator
has the potential to exhibit high sensitivity and selectivity
for detecting different cancer cells, such as leukemia, cer-
vical cancer, and breast cancer. The parameters of the ring
resonator are optimized to make the biosensor suitable for
detecting cancer cells in the pinch of blood with the sen-
sitivity of more than 200 nanometers per Refractive Index
Unit (nm/RIU) and quality factor of 1200. Through the finite
difference time domain (FDTD) method, it is observed that the
resonant wavelength of a ring resonator can be increased by
escalating the refractive index of the modal present on the
surface of the ring resonator. The simulation and analysis demonstrate that the outline sensitivity and quality factor of
the proposed biosensing platform are acceptable for the cancer cell level detection in the blood sample present on the
surface of the resonator. The proposed design also shows sufficiently separated resonant peaks for different cancer cells
that open the possibility of highly selective label-free cancer cell detection.
Index Terms — Silicon photonic device, optical ring resonator, biosensor, cancer cell detection, and finite difference
time domain.

I. I NTRODUCTION Silicon-photonics has also been widely used in optical fiber

I N THE photonic technological platforms, the signal is
carried by light rather than an electron as in the conven-
tional electronic technologies [1]. Electronic processing of the
signals is becoming restricted, particularly in the multi-GHz
frequency range, due to the parasitic effects of the copper wires
and other limitations of the materials used in micro and nano-
electronic domains. On the other hand, photonic technology
can offer data transmission at the THz range [2]. To harness
the power of photonic technology silicon-photonics would be
a very effective platform because these devices use silicon as
the optical medium that can be fabricated using the standard
CMOS technology [3]. The incorporation of a very high
index contrast (and thus substantial miniaturization) and the
availability of CMOS fabrication technology are enabling the
utilization of matured electronics fabrication facilities to make
photonic circuitry. As a result, silicon-photonics has been
established as the leading technology for the integration of
photonics and electronics in the same application systems [3].
Manuscript received October 8, 2019; accepted October 22, 2019.
Date of publication October 31, 2019; date of current version January 24,
2020. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and
approving it for publication was Dr. Sanket Goel. (Corresponding author:
Liaquat Ali.)
The authors are with the Department of Computer Science and Elec-
trical Engineering, University of Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas City, MO
64110 USA (e-mail: la5w7@mail.umkc.edu; mmwx3@mail.umkc.edu;
mktb2@mail.umkc.edu; abydm2@mail.umkc.edu; masud@ieee.org).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2019.2950664
communication, optical modulators, optical detection and opti-
cal sensing applications [4], [5].
An optical resonator or resonant optical cavity is a system
of optical components in which a beam of light is carried
in a closed direction. Microsphere, Microtoroid and Silicon
Microdisk (ring resonator) are some types of the optical
ring resonator. The microsphere is a sphere usually made
of SiO2 [6] or polymers [7] that acts as a cavity to accu-
mulate the energy of light at a specific wavelength. The
benefit of microsphere resonators is a very high-quality factor.
The fabrication of these devices is not repeatable because
there is no such standard and matured fabrication process.
Optical tapered fiber [8] is applied to couple the light into
the microsphere, which makes the inclusion of that type
of microresonators more difficult. The quality factor of the
microtoroid resonators is lower than the microspheres and
higher than the microdisk. Recently dependable and replica-
ble fabrication method for the realization of microtoroidal
resonators has been reported, where the quality factor is
improved to a very high level [9]. However, coupling to
the cavity is still a challenging part that makes the inte-
gration and the mass production of microtoroids difficult.
We are focusing on silicon microdisk or ring resonator to
implement our proposed biosensor design because it is one
of the most promising devices to develop integrated photonic
chip.

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 1868 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 20, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2020

A biosensor is an analytical device used for the identifica-

tion of an analyte that conglomerates a vital element with a
physicochemical indicator [10]. Biosensors were introduced in
the 1960s by the pioneers like Clark and Lyons [11]. There
are numerous types of biosensor namely enzyme-based, tissue-
based, magnetostrictive and piezoelectric biosensors, etc. The
applications of these sensors are mostly in the clinical sector,
but they are also popular in the food industry, environmental
and toxic detection, defense and marine applications. In the
optical biosensors, the recognition of biological analyte is
transformed into some related properties of optical light.
Optical biosensors are comprised of light source, light guiding Fig. 1. Grating Coupler for coupling optical fiber and integrated
waveguide.
medium, and photodetector. In recent decades, optical ring
resonators gained importance as one of the promising biosen-
sors due to miniaturized size and fast response. The optical (FDTD) simulation of each of the components of the proposed
ring resonator identifies the intended molecules or biochemical biosensing system. Section IV presents the approaches and
molecules by assessing the change in light behavior and that
modeling for five different cancer cell detection. Finally, last
change in light behavior occurs due to the interactivity of section concludes the paper with a summary of our future work
evanescent field of the resonating light with bio samples such
in this regard.
as blood, serum, salvia, bacteria, protein or DNA traits present
on the surface of the ring resonator. In response to that
interactivity, the medium changes the combined or effective II. B ASIC C OMPONENTS AND P ROPERTIES OF THE
refractive index of the bounded bio sample, which leads to P ROPOSED O PTICAL B IOSENSOR
a change of the resonance wavelength of the resonator. The In this section, the definitions and the basic components and
shift in the resonance wavelength quantifies the number of properties of optical ring biosensor and the two types of ring
biomolecules in the sample [12]. Among various types of resonators are presented.
silicon photonic biosensors the most common are photonic
crystals [13], disk resonators [14], Bragg gratings [15], strip
waveguide [16] and waveguide ring resonators [17], [18] based A. Grating Coupler
on the same principle in which a change in the refractive index
It is tough to couple optical light from a laser to an
is transferred into a shift in the resonance wavelength.
integrated waveguide. This is because the typical radius of
In general, ring resonators can be design and developed
an optical fiber is around 125um whereas in the integrated
in two models [19]. In the first model, two optical fibers
waveguide the core layer, where the guided mode is enclosed
are used, one to form a ring by connecting two ends of
of has a width in the range of 100-300nm. A grating coupler as
fibers and second optical fiber to couple the optical light
shown in Fig. 1 is used as a coupler between the optical fiber
into the ring [8]. The second model is integrated optical
and integrated waveguide. To address this coupling problem
structures (by integrated optics technology). These optical
several groups have recently demonstrated coupling losses
structures are more consistent and replicate multiple times.
below 1 dB using an inverted lateral taper with a polymer
They also offer many detections of bioparticles at the same
overlay [23], [24]. The surface coupling, as compared to edge
time by fabrication of similar ring resonators on a single chip
coupling, allows that coupling can be performed at any place
and covering the surface of the ring resonator with different
of the chip rather than on the edge of the chip.
layers [14], [20], [21].
One of the most leading causes of death in modern times
is different types of cancer. American Cancer Society in their B. Optical Ring Resonator
recent report [22] states that in more than 50% of death by
One of the ways to make an optical ring resonator is to
cancer, cancer has been diagnosed at the last stage. The report
combine the two ends of the single waveguide and forms a ring
statistically proves that these deaths could be prevented if
structure. The ring structure will trap the optical light inside
cancer could be detected at initial stages. Currently, the tech-
and the light will resonant after constructive interference at
niques, which could detect cancer at an early stage, are very
the resonance wavelength. The process of the resonance of an
limited in sensitivity and resolution [22]. The core target of
electromagnetic wave can be described mathematically as (1).
this paper is to outline a silicon photonics biosensor based
on optical ring resonator to be used for the detection of kd = 2πm (1)
cancer cells. In this paper, we have focused on validating the
preliminary concept through simulation. The later part of this where k = nk0 is the wavenumber of the light,d is the
paper is organized as follows. In Section II: basic components distance covered by the optical light in round trip, and m
and properties of proposed optical biosensor are discussed. is the resonance mode. In optical ring resonator, d could be
Section III presents the optical ring resonator-based biosensor exchanged with the parameter of the ring as k = 2π n e f f λ0 ,
and introduces the numerical finite difference time domain in which n e f f is the effective refractive index andλ0 is the

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 ALI et al.: HIGH-QUALITY OPTICAL RING RESONATOR-BASED BIOSENSOR FOR CANCER DETECTION
Fig. 2. Structure and spectral response for the all-pass ring resonator.
Fig. 3. Structure and spectral response for the add-drop ring resonator.
resonance wavelength. Applying the modifications above to
equation (1), the resonance wavelength would be
2πn e f f R
λ0 = (2)
m Fig. 5. Ring resonator bio sensor system.
where R is the radius of the ring, the equation (2) shows
the directly proportional relationship between the effective
refractive index and resonance wavelength.
Optical ring resonators can be clustered into two main
categories depending on the number of couplers that is present
along the ring resonator. The first type, All-Pass Filter has one
coupler whereas the second Add-Drop Filter has two couplers
along with the ring structure as shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3
respectively. Both types of optical ring resonators are defined
comprehensively in [25].
Sensitivity, quality factor, extinction ratio, and free spectral
range are few parameters to characterize the optical ring
resonator. The sensitivity(S) for ring resonator is the ratio of
change in the resonant wavelength due to change in refractive
index. Sensitivity is to be measured in terms of nanometer per
Refractive Index Unit (nm/RIU), and it should be as high as
possible.
λ
S= (3)
n
where λ is the change in resonant wavelength, and n is the
change in refractive index. The quality factor (Q) is defined as
the ratio of resonant wavelength to change in the wavelength
at Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM). The quality factor
should be as high as possible, and it is a unit-less parameter.
λ(r esonant)
Q= (4)
λ(F W H M)
where λ (r esonant) is wavelength at resonance, and
λ(F W H M) is the difference of wavelengths obtained at
FWHM. The extinction ratio for the ring resonator is defined
as the ratio of the maximum amplitude to the lowest amplitude
in the logarithmic scale.
 accordingly. This is required to obtain efficient coupling from
E R = 10log 10 (PL PH ) (5)
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1869
Fig. 4. Transmission spectrum for ring resonator circuit showing quality
factor and extinction ratio.
where PL is minimum amplitude, and PH is the maximum
amplitude of the signal at the resonance wavelength in through
port. Free spectral range (FSR) is defined as the spacing
in optical frequency or wavelength between two successive
reflected or transmitted optical light at maximum or minimum
amplitude. All these said properties are shown in Fig. 4 for
the typical spectral response of the ring resonator.
III. P ROPOSED D ESIGN
The overall system for biosensor consists of multi-
wavelength laser, optical fiber, grating couplers, waveguides,
ring resonator waveguide, coupling waveguide, and photode-
tector, as shown in Fig. 5. Optical light generated by a laser
is transmitted by optical fiber. Due to the size mismatch of
optical fiber and waveguide, the optical light is coupled to
integrated waveguide by grating couplers. After the light is
passed through ring resonator, it is coupled back to optical
fiber and is detected by the photodetector.
In this section, the simulation results for the grating coupler,
waveguide, and the ring waveguide is presented along with the
discussion on the complete ring resonator biosensor systems
at the end. The simulations are performed in Lumerical
MODE [26].
A. Grating Coupler
The cross-sectional area of an optical fiber core is almost
600 times larger than that of a silicon waveguide. Hence,
we need components that adjust the mode filed diameter
the fiber to the silicon chip and vice versa. The dimensions
 1870
Fig. 6. Spectral response of grating coupler from Lumerical
INTERCONNECT.
of our designed waveguide, discussed in the later section is
500nm, which is very small as compared to the single-mode
optical fiber whose diameter is 125um. The edge coupling
involves complex post-processing and high-resolution optical
orientation of the coupler and the chip, which in the end
increases the packaging cost. Surface coupling is applied
with waveguide grating coupler to solve the problem of edge
coupling. Grating couplers provide flexibility in the design
and allow performing wafer or chip-scale automated testing.
Wang [27] designed subwavelength grating coupler is applied
in the optical biosensor design which is optimized for a
wavelength of 1550nm. The power reflection coefficient for
the TE mode is −16.2dB and insertion loss of 4.1dB with
3dB bandwidth of 52.3nm, whereas for the TM mode the
insertion loss is 3.74dB with 3dB bandwidth of 82nm. The
optimized sub-wavelength grating coupler for the TE0 mode
has a 593nm grating period, a 237nm rating width, and a 74nm
sub-wavelength grating. The spectral response sub-wavelength
grating coupler is shown in Fig. 6.
B. Waveguide
A ring resonator is a circular shape waveguide. Therefore,
we first performed the simulation in Lumerical MODE [26]
for waveguide and then used the same waveguide in a cir-
cular shape to make a ring resonator. Here, we designed a
strip waveguide with 500nm width and 220nm height using
Lumerical MODE. We simulated the waveguide to calculate
the effective index for the wavelength of 1550nm. Fig. 7 (a)
shows the electric field intensity, and (b) shows the energy
density for the TE0 mode propagating in the designed optical
waveguide.
The effective index can be modeled using the Taylor expan-
sion around the center wavelength, as shown in equation (9).
Using the script editor of MODE we performed the curve fit-
ting for n e f f for our design, which is shown in equation (10).
n e f f (λ) = n 1 + n 2 (λ − λ0 ) + n 3 (λ − λ0 )2
n e f f (λ) = 2.44733 − 1.13268 (λ − 1.55)
− 0.0439436(λ − 1.55)2
The results from this simulation give the S-parameters for the
waveguide, which is used in the Lumerical INTERCONNECT
for ring resonator circuit design. When a waveguide is bend,
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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 20, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2020
Fig. 7. (a) Electric field intensity and (b) Energy density for TE0 mode
propagating in the waveguide.
TABLE I
D IFFERENT B ENT R ADIUS OVERLAP W ITH THE
L OSS FOR TE AND TM M ODE
it induces an optical loss in terms of mode mismatch loss and
radiation loss for optical mode transmission. If there is no
optimized bend radius given to waveguide, then significant
scattering occurs at the transition from the straight region.
This leads to optical loss and multiple modes are excited by
the bend. However, in our designed ring resonator circuit,
the optical light travels in the fundamental mode as stated
in the grating coupler discussion. Therefore, the mode in
waveguide must be in the fundamental mode. To understand
the bend loss and mode mismatch, we analyzed the overlap
function by Eigenmode solver for the propagation of optical
light in a waveguide with and without bent. After the overlap
analysis with different bend radius, we concluded that the bend
radius should be 5um for the TE mode, which is also the
width of the waveguide and 10um for the TM mode. Table I
shows the loss percentage in overlap, which states that 5um
radius for TE mode and 10um radius for bending waveguide
give the least loss. In our later simulation, 3um is used for
the radius of ring waveguide for several reasons. First, this
radius provides maximum transmission loss, in other words
maximum coupling, which is requirement for resonance of
optical light in ring waveguide, and smaller radius 3um would
keep the size of biosensor miniaturized.
(6) C. Ring Waveguide
Ring resonator is just a waveguide that is bent in a circular
(7) shape. From [18], the parameters for the proposed ring res-
onator are as follows: the radius of the ring (R) = 3.1um,
the width of the ring (wG ) = 500nm, thickness of waveguide
is (h) = 220nm and the gap between the ring resonator and
the waveguide (g) = 100nm. Table II presents the parameters
 ALI et al.: HIGH-QUALITY OPTICAL RING RESONATOR-BASED BIOSENSOR FOR CANCER DETECTION
TABLE II
R ING R ESONATOR AND C OUPLING WAVEGUIDE PARAMETERS
Fig. 8. (a) 3D view for the ring resonator circuit showing the through
and drop port, colored part is Si and grey part is SiO2 (b) same ring
resonator structure covered with known refractive index material and (c)
Transmission spectra of ring resonator circuit at through port in Lumeircal
MODE.
for the ring resonator and the coupling waveguide. Fig. 8 (a)
shows the 3D view of the ring resonator circuit in Lumerical
MODE, (b) present the same ring resonator covered with
known refractive index (c) shows the transmission spectra of
the ring resonator.
The same 3D structure is designed in COMSOL, as shown
in Fig. 9 (a) with its transmission spectra in Fig. 9 (b).
The reason to use COMSOL for simulation is to verify the
resonance in the spectral transmission.
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1871
Fig. 9. (a) 3D view for the ring resonator circuit showing light is being
coupled from linear waveguide to ring waveguide and (b) Transmission
spectra of ring resonator circuit through software COMSOL.
Fig. 10. Ring resonator bio-sensor system in Lumerical
INTERCONNECT.
D. Ring Resonator Biosensor System
As shown in Fig. 5, the ring resonator biosensor sys-
tem consists of grating couplers, linear waveguide, and ring
waveguide. We first designed and simulated the individual
components and then combined all the elements in Lumerical
INTERCONNECT to develop a complete biosensor system,
which is shown in Fig. 10. The ring resonator circuit designed
in these software contains the components from the library
SiEPIC EBeam PDK [28], whereas Fig. 11 shows the spectral
response for wavelength 1500nm to 1600nm. The response
gives the minimum loss in transmission around the wavelength
1550nm. The reason is that all the components in the circuit
are optimized around wavelength 1550nm.
IV. A NALYSIS FOR C ANCER C ELL D ETECTION
Different blood samples have different permittivity (E), and
according to relation (E = η2 ), the blood samples have
 1872
Fig. 11. Spectral response of ring resonator circuit for wavelength
1500 to 1600nm from Lumerical INTERCONNECT.
Fig. 12. Transmission spectra for a biosensor for different cells along
with their refractive indices. Parameters for ring resonator R = 3.1um,
g = 0.1 um, wG = 0.5 um, h = 0.22 um.
a different refractive index. The refractive index of healthy
person blood is 1.35 [29], whereas the refractive index of
blood having a particular cancer cell is different as shown
in. The propagation of light will vary in ring resonator with
various samples of blood because of their different refractive
indices. In the simulation, it is assumed that the refractive
index of the mass covering the surface of ring resonator is
varied according to blood samples, and corresponding change
at the output in transmission spectra is observed by simulation
for five different cancer cell lines along with healthy person’s
blood sample as shown in Fig. 12.
Results are shown for five different cancer cell lines, includ-
ing a normal blood sample, which can be easily differentiated
from infected blood samples, but the peak for a different
cancer blood sample is very close to each other with minimum
distance as 0.18nm. Other parameters to quantify the specific
cancer cell line is a quality factor and sensitivity which are
calculated according to equation (3)-(4) is very low as shown
in Table VI in the unoptimized column data analysis. In order
to optimize the ring resonator for higher sensitivity and quality
factor, following analysis are performed.
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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 20, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2020
TABLE III
C ANCER C ELL L INE W ITH T HEIR R EFRACTIVE
I NDEX OF THE S AMPLE [30]
TABLE IV
O PTIMIZATION OF R ING R ESONATOR , R ADIUS = 3 UM , AND
GAP = 0.1 UM AND C HANGING WAVEGUIDE W IDTH AND H EIGHT
A. Radii Analysis
The first analysis is performed to find out the optimized
radius for the ring resonator by keeping other parameters
for ring resonator as constant. For sensitivity calculation,
the refractive index for the top layer of the ring resonator
is set to n = 1, and then it is changed to n = 1.1. In this
way, the difference of refractive index unit RIU and change in
resonance wavelength are applied to equation (3) to calculate
the sensitivity. Fig. 13 (a) shows the sensitivity and (b) quality
factor values for different radii of the ring resonator. The radii
used in the simulation is from 3um to 3.2um with a difference
of 0.05 um. It can be observed from Fig. 13 that the radius 3um
shows the maximum quality factor, whereas the radius 3 and
3.2 shows the maximum sensitivity. For further simulation,
the radius of 3um is used because it shows the optimum quality
factor and sensitivity.
B. Waveguide Width and Height Analysis
The next step is to increase the quality factor without com-
promising the sensitivity of the proposed biosensor. Further
optimization is required to make the sensor highly accurate,
efficient and it is done by placing pure blood on the ring
resonator.
The first step of optimization is to change the width of
the waveguide (wG ) from 0.4 um to 0.5 um with an incre-
ment of 0.05 um while keeping the height of waveguide
 ALI et al.: HIGH-QUALITY OPTICAL RING RESONATOR-BASED BIOSENSOR FOR CANCER DETECTION 1873

Fig. 14. Transmission spectra for biosensor for different cells along with
their refractive indices for the optimized for ring resonator R = 3 um,
g = 0.1 um, wG = 0.45 um, h = 0.18 um.

Fig. 13. Variation of (a) Sensitivity and (b) Quality factor with a change
in radius of ring waveguide.

TABLE V
C OMPARISON W ITH O THER W ORK [30]

as 0.22 um. We found that at wG = 0.45 um maximum

value of sensitivity and quality factor occurs with 158 and
1324.59 respectively. It is further changing the height of the
waveguide (h) from 0.18 um to 0.22 um with an increment
of 0.02 um for all the values of the width of the waveguide.
It is observed that at some combination for waveguide width
and height there is no resonance as shown in Table IV
Final values obtained after waveguide height and width for
which the sensitivity and quality factor is maximum are
wG = 0.45 um and h = 0.18 um. During the simulation;
it is observed that the sensitivity and quality factor follows
opposite trend. In proposed final structure, the parameters
for ring resonator are acceptable and reasonable for fabrica-
tion to perform practical experiments on the ring resonator
biosensor.
The optimized structure is simulated for different cancer cell
lines including the normal cell, and corresponding transmis-
sion spectra are shown in Fig. 14. Variation for both measuring
Fig. 15. Quality factor and sensitivity for different cancer cells for
optimized ring resonator circuit.
parameters sensitivity and quality factor for different cancer
cells is shown in Fig. 15.
High sensitivity and quality factor are obtained as compared
to unoptimized structure results. Fig. 15 (a) and (b) shows
the quality factor and sensitivity in a bar chart for optimized
ring resonator for different diseases blood sample. Table V
shows the comparison of our optimized biosensor with [30],
although our proposed biosensor present lower quality factor
and sensitivity, but main advantage of our device is it is based
on the integrated silicon photonics technology, which means

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 1874
TABLE VI
R ESONANCE WAVELENGTH , Q UALITY FACTOR AND S ENSITIVITY FOR N ORMAL AND D IFFERENT
C ANCER B LOOD S AMPLE F ROM O PTIMIZED R ING R ESONATOR
the same CMOS foundry which fabricates integrated circuits
can be used to fabricate the biosensor which will reduce the
cost very low.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a label-free ring resonator-based biosensing
technique is proposed. The overall biosensing system con-
sists of multi-wavelength laser, optical fiber, grating couplers,
waveguides, ring resonator waveguide, coupling waveguide,
and photodetector. For high sensitivity and selectivity, different
designs of the ring resonators are simulated. Changes of the
refractive index of the sample placed on the ring resonator
surface lead to variation in the resonance wavelength of the
ring resonator. This change can be used to identify the pres-
ence of cancerous cells in the blood sample. Further research
can be performed to develop a biosensor that can quantify the
cancer cells to detect the severity of cancer. The work is still
at the theoretical stage, and we have focused on validating
the concept through the numerical FDTD simulation of each
of the components of the proposed biosensing system. In the
future, we plan to fabricate the sensor using E-Beam Lithogra-
phy technology, perform experiments for testing repeatability,
linearity, and stability of the proposed biosensor, and compare
the simulated and experimental results.
The proposed biosensor has the potential to provide fast
response typically in an hour as compared to the traditional
cancer cell detection methods that take days. It is minimal in
size, which means hundreds of biosensors can be fabricated
in a 1 × 1 inch die. Another advantage is that the traditional
CMOS foundry can be used to fabricate this type of sensors,
which will significantly reduce the cost of the biosensor.
Moreover, the properties and the design parameters of the
optical ring resonator can be further optimized to improve
detection efficiency in the future.
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Liaquat Ali received the B.S. degree in com-
munication systems engineering from the Insti-
tute of Space Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan,
in 2008, and the M.S. degree in advanced
optical technologies from Friedrich-Alexander-
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with
the Computer Science Electrical Engineering
Department, University of Missouri–Kansas City
(UMKC). His research interest includes inte-
grated silicon photonics circuits, optical res-
onator, and biosensors, graphene-based biosensors, and applying
machine learning techniques in biosensors. He received the UMKC
School of Graduate Studies Research Grant, in 2017. He is serving as a
Secretary at Graduate Student Council, UMKC. He is a Student Member
of the Optical Society America.
Mahmood Uddin Mohammed received the B.E.
degree in electrical and electronic engineer-
ing from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India,
in 2014, and the M.S. (summa cum laude) degree
in electrical engineering from the University of
Missouri Kansas City in 2016. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Computer
Science Electrical Engineering Department, Uni-
versity of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). He
works on emerging circuit designs based on
post-CMOS technology. He is also working as a
Technical Intern with Synopsys, Mountain View, CA, USA. He received
the UMKC School of Graduate Studies Research Grant, in 2016. He also
received the Dean’s International Scholarship Award for the master’s pro-
gram at UMKC. He served as the IEEE Special Project Manager (Inter-
national Graduate Student Ambassador) for the IEEE student branch,
UMKC. He was a Student Coordinator of the Electrical Engineering
Department, Osmania University (MJCET), in 2014, and the Marketing
Executive, National Technical Fest ADSOPHOS, Osmania University
(MJCET), in 2013. He organized many national-level workshops on
Recent Trends in Micro and Nano Technologies.
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1875
Mahrukh Khan (S’07–M’11) received the B.Sc.
and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from
the University of Engineering and Technology,
(UET), Lahore, Pakistan, in 2007 and 2011,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Missouri–
Kansas City (UMKC), Kansas City, MO, USA,
in 2017. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow
with the Nano and Micro Electronics Lab, UMKC.
She received the Outstanding Graduate Student
Award and the UMKC School of Graduate Stud-
ies Research Grant in 2016. Her research interests include biosen-
sors and devices, phased arrays and antennas, integrated antennas,
microwave circuits, THz electronics, and computational electromagnet-
ics. She is an active member of the IEEE Young Professionals and the
IEEE Women in Engineering.
Abdul Hamid Bin Yousuf received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees in applied physics and electron-
ics from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh,
in 2009 and 2011, respectively. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical and
computer engineering, University of Missouri–
Kansas City (UMKC), under the supervision of
Dr. M. Chowdhury. His research interests include
on-chip optical interconnect, 3D integrated cir-
cuits, on-chip interconnect modeling, and signal
integrity.
Masud H. Chowdhury (S’00–M’04–SM’09)
received the B.S. degree in electrical and elec-
tronic engineering from the Bangladesh Uni-
versity of Engineering and Technology (BUET),
Dhaka, in 1998 and the Ph.D. degree in com-
puter engineering from Northwestern University,
Evanston, IL, USA, in 2004. He is currently the
Associate Dean of the School of Computing
and Engineering and a Professor of Electrical
and Computer Engineering with the University
of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). He has pub-
lished over 170 articles in various journals and conferences in his fields
of research, which includes microelectronics and nanotechnology. He
has served as the Chair of the IEEE VLSI Systems and Applications
Technical Committee from 2014 to 2016. He is also serving as an
Associate Editor of the IEEE TCAS II, the Journal of Circuits, Systems,
and Signal Processing (Springer), and Microelectronics Journal (Else-
vier). He served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
VERY LARGE SCALE INTEGRATION (TVLSI) SYSTEMS from 2013 to 2018.
He has also been serving the professional community as the Sympo-
sium Chair, the Conference Track Chair, a Special Session Organizer,
the Review Committee Chair, the Session Chair, and in various other
community service roles for the last 15 years. In his brief career, he
has already graduated over 30 Ph.D. and M.S. degrees thesis students.
He is currently supervising seven Ph.D. and one M.S. thesis students
and one Postdoctoral Fellow. He received the Leadership Excellence
Achievement Program (LEAP) Award 2017 from the Missouri Society
of Professional Engineers (MSPE) for demonstrated mentoring abilities
that encourage students to seek leadership excellence in the engineering
profession.