Highlight Award:

2026 Humboldt Fellow for Experienced Researcher

2025 Optica Fellow

2025 Moore Experimental Physics Investigator

2025 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer

2024 SPIE Fellow

2023 UCI Beall Innovation Award in Physical Sciences

2023, 2022 Finalist of Moore Inventor Fellow

2022 iCANX Young Scientist Award

2021 Finalist of Rising Stars of Light

2020 SPIE Rising Researcher

2020 Baylor Outstanding Professor

2019 DARPA Director’s Fellowship

2018 NSF CAREER

2018 Baylor Young Investigator

2018 OSA Ambassador

2017 DARPA Young Faculty 

Background:

I was born in a small but beautiful city, Hong Kong. I studied applied physics at the City University of Hong Kong, where I received BSc (Hons I) degree in 2006. I completed my MPhil in Electronic Engineering and Photonics at the City University of Hong Kong in December 2008 under the supervision of Professor Kin Seng Chiang. The title of my MPhil thesis is “Cladding-mode coupling and surface-plasmon-mode coupling in conventional and photonic-crystal fibers”. 

Afterward, I moved to Germany and started PhD degree in Physics at Max Planck Institute for Science of Light in Germany under the supervision of Professor Philip Russell and Professor Markus Schmidt. My research lie in the area of plasmonics and photonic crystal fiber (PCF), where I presents the first successful integration of two completely different research fields by introducing plasmonic metal-nanowires into pure silica photonic crystal fibers. The study provides an entirely novel platform for investigation of the optical physics of propagating surface plasmon polaritons and presents a new class of hybrid plasmonic/photonic waveguiding, enabling the realization of novel optical devices, such as in-fiber wavelength-dependent filters and polarizers and near-field tips for sub- wavelength-scale imaging. Beside plasmonics research, I also demonstrated ultra-sensitive optical sensing based on microstructured fibers, discovered a large Faraday rotation in magneto-optical glasses, and investigated the properties of orbital angular momentum resonances in helically twisted photonic crystal fibers, those results lead to novel optical applications.

I was working as a postdoctoral scholar in Professor Harry Atwater's group at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in United States. My research focus on the study of transparent conducting oxide active plasmonics and materials, negative refraction and hyperlens imaging properties of 2D metasurfaces, and plasmonic resonant networks or nano circuit. 

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at University of California, Irvine.