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Assistant Professor
"I couldn’t possibly read a thousand pages a week for each class,"says Apsel, who joined the faculty in August 2002 as the Clare Booth Luce Assistant Professor of Engineering and is spending her first semester at Cornell building the team for her laboratory in optoelectronic VLSI [Very Large Scale Integration] systems. "For me, engineering seemed easier. So I concentrated on electrical engineering and did a pretty broad course load, because if you’re going to build anything new, you need to know a little bit about a lot of different areas. That’s why this area is so interesting to me—it’s a fusion of a lot of different things. I’m able to work in communications, circuits, optics, and systems." Beginning her graduate work as an analog designer, Apsel worked with Andreas Andreou at Johns Hopkins University, where she helped devise a cost-effective method to improve communication between microchips. Combining photonics and opto-electronics, Apsel’s system uses fiber optics and state-of-the-art silicon on sapphire (SOS) technology to create a breakthrough in the way computer systems are assembled. It was a chance for her to put that broad background to use, and now that she’s at Cornell, Apsel plans to continue designing and building high-speed, low-power optoelectronic interconnects. "The possibilities of combining these technologies are enormous," says Apsel, who grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and spends her free time relaxing with her husband and two cats in their Victorian home in downtown Ithaca. "I’ve been getting to see more of the Ithaca area, going for walks, spending time with my new neighbors, and drinking a lot of hot chocolate. The people here are extremely friendly, very laid-back. It’s really very comfortable." |
When she arrived at Swarthmore College, Alyssa Apsel wasn’t sure whether she wanted to major in history or engineering. But as soon as she saw the reading load for history, she made up her mind.