Leah Espenhahn works with Dr. John Dallesasse at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on creating heterogeneously integrated III-V photonic devices on silicon via epitaxial transfer. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2020, then joined Dr. Dallesasse’s group at UIUC where she has since been working on her PhD. She has recently presented her research at SPIE Photonics West in 2022.