Lighting the Way for Women in Science

In 1987, Michal Lipson and her twin sister walked into their first physics class at the Instituto de Física of the University of São Paulo in Brazil, eager to embark on their academic journeys. As they looked around, an unsettling realization set in—they were the only two women in the classroom. That evening, when she returned home, Lipson asked her father, Reuven Opher, himself a physicist, why he had never warned them that they would be such an anomaly in their field.

“My father honestly didn’t even think about it as an issue,” Lipson recalls. “He was so used to it, so he didn’t see women pursuing STEM majors as a problem. He didn’t see gender—for good and for bad.”

The moment stayed with Lipson. It became a source of quiet strength. “By not putting us into this ‘minority’ title, my father inspired me to pursue what we loved without hesitation,” she says. 

That unshaken belief carried her through a groundbreaking career in silicon photonics, a field she helped pioneer and which has now revolutionized data transmission, artificial intelligence, and microelectronics. Today, Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia Engineering, member of the National Academy of Sciences and newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Changing the narrative

Throughout her career, Lipson has had to navigate the same gendered dynamics she first encountered in that first-year physics class. Decades later, she still finds herself scanning the room at scientific conferences, counting the number of other women present—often just a handful or none at all.

“Despite our enormous efforts, I don’t think the numbers have improved,” she says. “The awareness has changed, but the numbers? Not so much.”

One of the biggest hurdles for women in STEM, she notes, isn’t outright discrimination but rather subtle biases—the ways women are described, evaluated, and often diminished in professional settings.

Lipson has been vocal about these disparities, particularly in academia, where women’s recommendation letters tend to focus on qualities like being “hardworking” and “enthusiastic” rather than their intellectual brilliance. “Men are rarely praised for ‘working hard’—it’s just assumed,” she says.

Her advocacy extends beyond words. At Columbia Engineering, she works to ensure that young female faculty and students receive the mentorship and support they need to thrive. “We have to make sure they are supported and respected like everybody else,” she says. “And this part of the puzzle is improving.”

Though men still dominate the architecture and engineering fields, women have made strides over the decades. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women accounted for just 9 percent of professionals in these industries in the 1990s. By 2024, that number had risen to 17.2 percent. 

Betting on silicon photonics

In the early 2000s, silicon photonics was far from the established field it is today. At the time, many believed that silicon was not an ideal optical material, particularly when compared to well-known photonic materials like compound semiconductors. There were no commercial foundries dedicated to fabricating silicon photonics, and some dismissed the entire concept as a fleeting academic trend.

Lipson, then a faculty member at Cornell University, was repeatedly advised to diversify her research and not to “put all her eggs in one basket.” It was a risky bet—there were no guarantees that silicon photonics would gain traction, and pursuing a niche, unproven field could jeopardize her academic career.

But Lipson saw the potential. By the time she faced her three-year tenure review, the pressure to shift research directions intensified. Some urged her to explore safer, more conventional areas of optics. But instead of stepping away, she made a bold decision:

“I believed in it. I was going to continue. And if I couldn’t stay at Cornell, that’s okay.”

The decision proved to be pivotal. Lipson’s foundational work—particularly her breakthroughs in ring modulators, fiber-to-chip coupling and slot waveguides—laid the groundwork for what would become a booming field. Her research paper on slot waveguides (Optics Letters, 2004) has since been cited over more than 1600 times, helping trigger a wave of research and industry adoption.

This paper was originally viewed as a theoretical exercise, Lipson says. Years later, she was visiting a semiconductor foundry when they presented a standardized industry fabrication process, a detailed method for coupling fibers to silicon waveguides—one that was, to her astonishment, nearly identical to what she had published years before. “I was stunned to see that they used it exactly as we had described,” she says. “I didn’t believe it would be so heavily used at the time.”

Silicon photonics is now integral to high-speed data transfer, cloud computing, and AI infrastructure. Large-scale foundries now manufacture silicon photonic chips, something that seemed nearly impossible when Lipson first started.

Quantum, AI and novel materials

Now, Lipson’s work is focused on the next frontier: scaling silicon photonics for AI and quantum computing.

“The bandwidth is never enough. There are never enough channels, never enough speed,” she explains. “So one direction we’re working on is enabling silicon photonics to keep scaling in efficiency.”

Another avenue of her research involves integrating novel materials into silicon photonics systems, an area that was once considered impractical.

“Foundries today are much more willing than we initially thought to integrate new materials,” she says. “We’re now exploring lithium niobate, silicon nitride, and even emerging materials like barium tantalite.”

Her research has also led her to Xscape Photonics, the company she co-founded in 2022 along with Columbia Engineering faculty and frequent collaborators Keren Bergman and Alexander Gaeta to tackle AI’s growing data transfer bottleneck. The startup recently secured $44 million in Series A funding to develop multi-color photonic connectivity solutions that could dramatically reduce energy consumption and increase computing efficiency in AI data centers.

“It’s extremely gratifying,” she says. “For the first time, we’re taking the technology we developed in our labs and applying it directly to solve one of the biggest problems in the industry.”

Words of wisdom for the next generation

When asked what advice she would give to young women entering STEM, Lipson’s answer is clear: pursue what you truly believe in, even if it means going against the grain.

“Make sure that what you pursue is something you understand deeply and believe in—not because it’s fashionable, not because others think it’s important, but because you do,” she says. “If you do that, it’s going to fly.”

Her own story is proof of that conviction. From a lone female student in a physics lecture hall in Brazil to a leader in the booming field of silicon photonics, Lipson has been instrumental in reshaping the future of technology—all by trusting in the power of her own light.

Read the original story here: https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/about/news/lighting-way-women-science