About

Professor John Dallesasse has over 20 years of experience in the Optoelectronics Industry, holding various positions in technology development and management, including Vice President of MicroLink Devices and Senior Director of Engineering and Technology for Emcore's Fiber Optics Division. He is the Gregory E. Stillman Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2024. His academic career includes positions such as Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2018 to 2024. His technical contributions include co-discovering III V Oxidation with Nick Holonyak, Jr., which has become an important process technology in the fabrication of high-speed VCSELs. Dallesasse has been actively involved in the IEEE 802.3 standards effort, contributing to the definition of the 10GBASE-LX4 port type for use with legacy multimode fiber. His research focuses on photonic integration for next-generation optical networks, addressing the challenges of integrating silicon photonics and compound semiconductors like InP and GaAs. His work aims to develop cost-effective, reliable photonic integrated circuits by overcoming material compatibility and manufacturability barriers, including the use of wafer bonding techniques and device integration strategies. Dallesasse is committed to mentoring young engineers, passing on his industry experience, and fostering innovation in photonics and optoelectronics. His research group actively involves undergraduates in research projects related to advanced semiconductor devices and integration.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Electronic engineering
• Computer network

Selected publications

• Negative differential resistance, self-oscillations, and light emission in transistor-injected quantum cascade structures

  Applied Physics B · 2026-04-21

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract We experimentally demonstrate negative differential resistance, collector current oscillations, and light emission in a transistor-injected quantum cascade structure. Distinct transport regimes are accessed by varying the reverse bias across the base-collector junction while independently controlling emitter injection. The collector current shows pronounced oscillations and alternating high–low levels as the reverse bias changes, indicating quantum transport through the superlattice. Oscillations at a peak frequency of 3.2 MHz occur within high-bias negative differential resistance regions. Spontaneous short-wave infrared (SWIR) emission from the base region is characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, revealing a peak wavelength of 1.58 $$\mu $$ m. Coupling between the emitted light and superlattice modes is confirmed by SWIR intensity oscillations synchronized with collector current oscillations. Under forward bias of the base-collector junction, the device emits coherent SWIR light at 1.58 $$\mu $$ m, aided by carrier confinement from a quantum impedance matching region. Additionally, spontaneous mid-wave infrared emission is observed from the quantum cascade structure. This three-terminal, transistor-injected platform integrates electronic modulation with tunable optical output, showing promise for a versatile alternative to conventional two-terminal quantum cascade devices that could enable new opportunities in long-wavelength photonics for sensing, communication, and spectroscopy applications.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial JQE 60th Anniversary: The 80’s

  IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics · 2025-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• JQE 60th Anniversary: The 2020’s

  IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics · 2025-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• JQE 60th Anniversary: 1965–2025

  IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics · 2025-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• EcoMAT: Energy-Efficient and Accurate Tracking of Chemical Containers with Magnets Toward Automated Laboratory Management

  2025-10-27

  article

  Chemical container tracking ensures continuous monitoring of container positions, essential for safely handling hazardous chemicals in labs, hospitals, and industrial settings. However, vision-based methods require energy-hungry cameras and GPUs, while radio frequency approaches face signal attenuation and interference. This paper presents EcoMAT, an energy-efficient and accurate physical container tracking system based on permanent magnets. The unique physical properties of permanent IoT magnets avoid signal attenuation and sensing interference problems. Moreover, EcoMAT is charging-free and energy-efficient by deploying lightweight magnetic field sensors and attaching permanent magnets as tags to chemical containers. The evaluation results show that EcoMAT achieves a localization error (i.e., 1.71 cm to 2.06 cm) sufficient for localizing regular-sized containers. EcoMAT also attains low latency (< 2 ms), negligible memory usage (< 100 B), low power consumption (0.48 W), and a low price (as low as $50).

  PublisherDOI

• Utilization of silicon optical coatings for transverse-mode suppression in high-power oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

  Applied Physics Letters · 2025-05-19

  articleSenior author

  Engineering of the electric-field standing-wave pattern of oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) via a scalable, high-refractive-index silicon optical coating is demonstrated to achieve high-power, single-transverse-mode emission. The electron-beam deposition of a thin silicon film atop a standard VCSEL structure reduces the amplitude of the electric-field standing wave over the quantum well gain region, raising the threshold modal gain. Patterning the coating into the shape of an annulus increases the threshold modal gain in the periphery of the VCSEL aperture overlapping with the higher-order transverse modes while leaving the central region unaffected. This patterning creates a radially dependent threshold modal gain profile, suppressing higher-order modes and encouraging operation in a single-fundamental mode. High-power continuous-wave single-mode emission with an output power of 7.43 mW in 850 nm AlGaAs-based VCSELs with silicon coatings is demonstrated, as well as submillamp threshold currents, thermal rollover delay, and a side-mode suppression ratio exceeding 30 dB for single-fundamental-mode operation at room temperature.

  PublisherDOI

• MachineStethoscope: A Smart and Cost-effective Machine Health Monitoring System

  2025-08-06

  article

  In diverse laboratory environments such as scientific cleanrooms, manufacturing shopfloors, and testing laboratories, machine health monitoring systems (MHMS) are vital to automatically detect early machine faults and reduce the cost of machine failures and downtime. However, considering commercial MHMS's high cost, many labs and facilities like the campus academic scientific laboratories have not deployed MHMS, and facilities engineers still need to check machines manually and periodically. In this work, we present MachineStethoscope, a highly efficient and portable edge-based MHMS, with extremely low cost (10X less than commercial ones) that enables effective, automatic, continuous, real-time, and on-device machine fault detection at scale. MachineStethoscope uses a new data collection hardware design that fully exploits the potential of cost-effective Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices to reduce the cost while maintaining high performance. MachineStethoscope includes a novel anomaly detection pipeline that treats IoT sensory data streams as video streams and can efficiently and effectively detect and extract machine anomalies that are hard to observe by humans. We have deployed our system in real academic scientific laboratories and extensively tested our system with (a) real-world data and (b) synthesized data, generated by our novel data generation algorithm that can generate realistic machine degradation data. The experimental results show that MachineStethoscope can detect many more machine anomalies than other systems. Since the anomaly detection is solely run on the edge device, MachineStethoscope uses 90% less network bandwidth compared to cloud-based MHMS systems.

  PublisherDOI

• JQE 60th Anniversary: The 70’s

  IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics · 2025-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• GaugeTracker: AI - Powered Cost-Effective Analog Gauge Monitoring System

  2024-08-07 · 1 citations

  article

  Automating analog gauge readings is essential for providing stakeholders with timely alerts about abnormalities in physical properties measured by gauges, such as pressure, and for offering detailed historical data to improve understanding of the work environment. However, existing systems face challenges in balancing accuracy, continuity, reading latency, network band-width usage, and cost. In this study, we introduce GaugeTracker, an end-to-end system to address these challenges. Our proposed method, based on template matching for gauge reading, precisely determines the current angle of the gauge pointer, significantly outperforming state-of-the-art baselines with an average error of 1.81 degrees. By leveraging the versatility of large vision-language models, we develop a pipeline for automatically generating accurate and realistic gauge templates for each specific gauge at various readings on the server. Deployed on the world's most affordable IoT camera, which is mounted in front of a gauge using our customized camera holder, our prototype system can read the gauge 7 times per second by processing entirely on the device. This delivers continuous and accurate gauge readings across diverse environmental conditions. Furthermore, with a cost of merely $10 per gauge, our system offers a highly cost-effective solution for real-time analog gauge monitoring.

  PublisherDOI

• Ultra-sensitive current bistability and light switching in a resonant tunneling superlattice transistor

  Journal of Applied Physics · 2024-04-24 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Bistability in the current–voltage characteristics of semiconductor superlattices and quantum cascade laser structures has the potential for wide-ranging applications, particularly in sensing systems. However, the interdependency of applied bias and current injection in conventional two-terminal structures has led to complications in analysis and rendered the bistability phenomenon difficult to implement in practical applications. Here, we report a new kind of electronic bistability coupled to optical switching in a resonant tunneling bipolar superlattice transistor. This bistability manifests as sharp discontinuities in the collector current with extremely small variations of the applied voltage, which arise from unstable tunneling transmission across the hetero-barrier between the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the edge of the transistor base and the collector superlattice structure. The electronic transitions between high and low quantum mechanical transmissions are demonstrated to be caused by self-consistent variations of the internal electric field at the heterointerface between the 2DEG and the superlattice. They are also present in the base current of the three-terminal device and result in sharp switching of near-infrared spontaneous light emission output from an interband radiative recombination process with a peak emission wavelength of 1.58 μm. A comprehensive quantum mechanical theoretical model accounting for the self-consistent bistable tunneling transmission is in quantitative agreement with the experimental data. The measured peak transconductance sensitivity value of 6000 mS can be used in the highly sensitive detector and non-linear device applications.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• The Transistor-Injected Quantum Cascade Laser, An Improved Coherent Mid-IR Source

  NSF · $400k · 2014–2018

• E2CDA: Type I: Collaborative Research: Electronic-Photonic Integration Using the Transistor Laser for Energy-Efficient Computing

  NSF · $1.5M · 2016–2022

Frequent coauthors

• R Todi

  152 shared

• Paul R. Berger

  Ida Darwin hospital

  150 shared

• Benjamı́n Iñı́guez

  Universidad Rovira i Virgili

  150 shared

• Patrick Fay

  150 shared

• K. Ishimaru

  University of Cambridge

  150 shared

• C Bulucea

  Ida Darwin hospital

  149 shared

• M De Souza

  Ida Darwin hospital

  146 shared

• M Polavarapu

  Ida Darwin hospital

  146 shared

Awards & honors

• ECE News: Dallesasse Named Fellow of the Optical Society
• ECE News: Dallesasse Selected as IEEE Fellow