Author
Tyler Hughes
Works on photonics, simulation software, and product direction, and writes practical explanations of computational methods.
Articles
Automated "Inverse" Design of Grating Couplers for Co-Packaged Optics
How we design grating couplers for co-packaged optics with shape optimization and adjoint gradients, with a worked dual-layer example and measured dual-layer couplers from an OFC 2026 paper we co-authored with TSMC.
Using decision models to speed up design rule violation repair in chip design
AI agents can fix design rule violations on chips, but the process is slow. We used a decision model to choose fixes for design rule check (DRC) violations on a digital and a photonic benchmark, and kept nearly all the quality of a large language model at under half its cost.
Can AI Agents Autonomously Design Components on Photonic Chips?
We gave AI agents a photonic simulator, a DRC engine, and four design challenges. They autonomously designed waveguide bends, crossings, splitters, and demultiplexers — some reaching near-perfect performance.
Designing a Photonic Chip Component with ~45 Lines of Python
A compact introduction to photonic inverse design with Tidy3D, using a pre-built simulation and a ~45-line optimization loop.