Ghada Dushaq is a technologist and post-doctoral associate at New York University-UAE, and has a PhD in microsystem engineering from Masdar Institute for Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, a master’s in solid state physics from the University of Jordan, and a bachelor’s in physics with a minor in mathematics from Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine. She has, through her company, devised a method to integrate novel germanium based 2D materials on silicon photonic platforms for short and long reach high-speed optical communication. This will limit electrical resistance within computers, increasing the operation speed, lowering energy costs, and increasing the distance information can be sent without data loss.