Aaswath P. Raman

M.S., Ph.D., Applied Physics, Stanford University, 2013
M.S., Computer Science, Harvard University, 2006
A.B. cum laude, Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics, Harvard University, 2006

Publications   |   Awards & Fellowships   |   Work Experience

I am a graduating Ph.D. student (and soon to be Postdoctoral Fellow) in Shanhui Fan's group, located in the Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford University. My research interests include nanophotonics, photovoltaics, plasmonic structures, metamaterials, and thermal photonics. I am broadly interested in applying ideas from these fields to solving pressing challenges in the energy landscape and enabling the development of new products that can reduce or re-direct conventional energy usage patterns.

Beyond scientific research, I have a strong interest in policy and design issues surrounding renewable energy and infrastructure development in both the developing and developed world. Meeting our energy needs in a minimally-polluting, financially sound and inequity-reducing way is one of the great challenges of our time; I hope to contribute to this endeavour, technologically and otherwise. To that end, I've engaged deeply in several projects & classes at the d.school (Institute of Design) and the Mechanical Engineering department. More recently, I've become very interested in the intersection of new technologies, governance and development approaches. Since June 2012, I've been part of an exciting interdisciplinary collaboration between Stanford and UNHCR to re-design and re-think refugee camps and communities.


Publications  (Google Scholar)

(13) Aaswath Raman, Wonseok Shin and Shanhui Fan, "Upper bound on the modal material loss rate in plasmonic and metamaterial systems", Physical Review Letters, 110, 183901 (2013).

(12) Eden Rephaeli*, Aaswath Raman* and Shanhui Fan, "Ultrabroadband Photonic Structures to Achieve High-Performance Daytime Radiative Cooling", Nano Letters, 13, 1457-1461 (2013) (*co-first authors).

(11) Zongfu Yu, Aaswath Raman and Shanhui Fan, "Thermodynamic upper bound on broadband light coupling with photonic structures", Physical Review Letters, 109, 173901 (2012).

(10) Wonseok Shin, Aaswath Raman and Shanhui Fan, "Instantaneous electric energy and electric power dissipation in dispersive media", J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 29, 1048-1054 (2012).

(9) Zongfu Yu, Aaswath Raman and Shanhui Fan, "Nanophotonic light-trapping theory for solar cells", Applied Physics A (2011), Invited Paper.

(8) Aaswath Raman, Zongfu Yu and Shanhui Fan, "Dielectric nanostructures for broadband light trapping in organic solar cells", Optics Express, 19, 20, 19015 (2011).

(7) Aaswath Raman and Shanhui Fan, "Perturbation theory for plasmonic modulation and sensing", Physical Review B, 83, 205131 (2011).

(6) Zongfu Yu, Aaswath Raman, and Shanhui Fan, "Fundamental limit of nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (41), 17491-17496 (2010).

(5) Zongfu Yu, Aaswath Raman, and Shanhui Fan, "Fundamental limit of light trapping in grating structures", Optics Express, 18, 103, A366 (2010).

(4) Aaswath Raman and Shanhui Fan, "Photonic band structure of dispersive metamaterials formulated as a Hermitian eigenvalue problem", Physical Review Letters, 104, 087401 (2010). [pdf]

(3) Aaswath Raman, Mariangela Lisanti, David J. Wilner, Chunhua Qi, and Michiel Hogerheijde, "A Keplerian Disk around the Herbig Ae star HD169142" ,The Astronomical Journal, April 2006. [pdf]

(2) Krysta M. Svore, Qiang Wu, Chris Burges, and Aaswath Raman, "Improving Web Spam Classification using Rank-time Features", Proceedings of Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web (AIRWeb), January 2007.

(1) Leonid Peshkin and Aaswath Raman. "Intelligent Summarization of Text Documents" , Proceedings of the International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems (ICCNS), 2003.


Notable Awards & Fellowships


Work Experience

  • Microsoft, Redmond, WA, Program Manager, Live Search (Bing) Webspam Team, August 2006 - August 2007.
  • Capasso Group, Harvard University, Research Assistant, Nanophotonics (experimental optomechanics) research, 2005 - 2006.
  • Endeca Technologies, Cambridge, MA, Research & Product Management Intern, Guided Search (Enterprise), June - September 2005.
  • Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University, Research Assistant, Observations and analysis of a protoplanetary disk with Dr. David Wilner, January - June 2005.


Some Old Non-Science Writings

"Social Justice and the Migration of Highly Skilled Elites" 2005. Final Paper for Philosophy 277 - Social Justice and Cultural Diversity, taught by Amartya Sen and Phillippe van Parijis.

"Minorities among Minorities: Identity and Existence in Modern India" 2003. An early attempt to be a Social Anthropologist. Later published in The Harvard South Asian Journal.


Favourite Short Fiction

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto

The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri


(c) 2013. Any publications are for personal use only and may not be re-distributed or used for commercial purposes.