Eric was selected as a 2024 Google Research Scholar in the category of Applied Science, to explore Parsing Physics Literature with Large Language Models. The Research Scholar Program provides unrestricted gifts to support world-class research conducted by early-career professors. The idea of this project came out of an ongoing URAP project with Andrew and Khoa. Congratulations and we appreciate the support!  

The team of Mike Crommie, Eric Y. Ma, Alp Sipahigil, and Feng Wang at UC Berkeley Physics & EECS was selected by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative to develop an unprecedented Quantum-Limited Atomic Force Microscope based on recent advances in nano-optomechanics. It will be fun!

Nate was selected as a recipient of the prestigious Berkeley Connect Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship provides graduate students with research support and professional development. Nate will provide academic mentoring to undergraduates in Physics helping students build community and increase their sense of belonging at UC Berkeley. Congrats Nate!

Junyi's paper "Advanced microwave impedance microscopy for emerging materials and devices" is accepted by 2024 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium. Here we talked about how our recent breakthrough in microwave impedance microscopy (under review) enables a range of advanced sensing modalities. Congratulations and see you in DC in June!

Nate's paper "Physics-agnostic inverse design using transfer matrices" is published in APL Machine Learning. Here we demonstrated inverse-designing non-intuitive optical, acoustic, and quantum structures using a single unified framework. This work marks the 1st publication from the group at the interface of Physics and ML/AI. Much more to come soon.

Jiarui Liu, a new graduate student from USTC in the Berkeley Applied Science & Technology program joins Ma Lab. Jiarui will work on mid-infrared photonics based on optical phonons. Welcome!

Aditi, a MPS Scholar, Trey, a SEED Scholar, and Joshua, a Pi2 Scholar, join Ma Lab as undergraduate researchers this summer, to work on various aspects of microwave microscopy and spectroscopy. Welcome!

Junyi and Nate's paper on design principles of transmission-mode microwave impedance microscopy (T-MIM) is published in Applied Physics Letters. This work extends our recent quantitative understanding of conventional reflection-mode operation to transmission mode, and will allow us to build T-MIMs beyond the weak sampling regime.  

Eric won the prestigious Amazon Physical Science Fellowship! This award recognizes 3 individuals who have shown the skills necessary to bridge the gap between fundamental scientific results in the physical sciences and the development of impactful technologies. We thank Amazon for the generous support and look forward to more future collaborations with Amazon Science.

Our paper on the Reststrahlen effect in the optically-thin limit is published in Nano Letters, and selected as Cover! This paper established a general framework for treating coherent resonant response in optically-thin media, using hBN films across 5 orders of magnitude in thickness as a model system. 

Katie, Erfan, and Ruiyu join Ma Lab as undergraduate researchers. Welcome! Katie is a freshman in EECS, and Erfan and Ruiyu are Physics BPIE students.

Junyi and Adam's paper on universal signal scaling in microwave impedance microscopy is published in Applied Physics Letters today. The first original research paper from the group -- congrats! 

Junyi, Nate, and Lance join Ma Lab as the 1st postdoc, 1st graduate student, and the 1st CS major undergrad. Welcome!

Congrats to Jiu for being selected as a prestiguous Pi2 Summer Scholar! She will develop an open-source high-speed lock-in amplifier with external reference, mentored directly by Eric. 

Starting with an empty room, after a few weekends' cleaning and IKEA work, and thanks to the help of all the team members, our student office is now in great working condition! (yes we need better cable management and more shelves)

This is the maker/DIY spirit of Ma Lab in display -- easily one of the best student offices in the building with an extremely low renovation budget!

The 2022 Spring URAP cohort of three join Ma Lab! Check them out in Teams. Thanks to all who applied through URAP again. Feel free to reach out if you have ideas about the various Summer programs!

Our URAP projects for Spring 2022 are online! We are recruiting student apprentices with diverse sets of analog/digital/RF electronics and CS/data science skills this semester.

Our main lab renovation is "almost" ready, after a hectic week installing the optical tables and fixing last-minute issues. A subset of people who made this possible (from left to right): Caesar & Travis (superintendent) from Build Group, Thad (main architect) from Shaffer Architects, and Jed, our fearless project manager.

Adam and Yufeng become the first Ma Lab members through URAP. Welcome! Adam will work on designing and building a cost-effective high-performance microwave reflectometer, and Yufeng on making a multi-node real-time Cloud-enabled lab environment monitoring system. 

Thanks to all who applied for our URAP projects again. Feel free to check back in Spring!

Ma Lab has two Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) projects for Fall 2021, one for building microwave reflectometry using low-cost components, and the other for real-time Cloud-enabled lab environment monitoring. Check them out here!

Our main lab, Birge B260, with ~70% renovation done. You can see HEPA filters in the ceiling and overhead racks for the optical tables. The design and planning started well over a year ago. Kudos to the team!

Ma Lab kick-off party with perfect 1/1 attendance at the Sather Gate. Hello Berkeley!