People

Wei-Chuan Shih earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D. from National Taiwan U, National Chiao Tung U, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. His Ph.D. work was conducted at MIT Spectroscopy Laboratory/NIH Laser Biomedical Research Center under the tautelage of late laser physicist Dr. Michael S. Feld, studying novel optical spectroscopy techniques for non-invasive chemical/biomedical sensing and disease diagnosis. He also worked extensively on MEMS design and nanofabrication at MIT Mechanical Engineering under Drs. George Barbastathis and Sang-Gook Kim. Prior to joining the U. of Houston, he was Schlumberger research fellow, studying optical analysis of hydrocarbon and offshore oil spill monitoring.

Dr. Shih is tenured Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering and Chemistry at the U. of Houston. He holds the Cullen College of Engineering Professorship. He was MIT Martin Fellow of Sustainability, and received NSF CAREER Award in Biophotonics, inaugural NASA Early CAREER Faculty Award, UH Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship, UH Cullen College of Engineering Faculty Research Excellence Award, ans Cullen College of Engineering Rising Innovator Award (Inaugural). Besides NSF and NASA, his research has also supported by NIH, US Air Force, DoI, GoMRI, and multiple foundations. Dr. Shih has served as Associate Editor for Optica Optics Express (2020-), SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics (2020-), and Optica Applied Optics (2017-2020). He is an elected SPIE Fellow, and Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Optica, and IEEE.

Dr. Shih has published more than 120 articles in the public domain, including ~80 journal papers and 18 issued US patents. His research has been featured on Optica Optics & Photonics News (OPN), CNBC, Forbes, ScienceDaily, Phys.org, SpectroscopyNOW, Houston PBS, UH Moment and numerous other media outlets. Dr. Shih has delivered seminars at famed institutions such as MIT, Columbia, Duke, Rice, NC State, U Minnesota, UT Health, UC Davis, TAMU, Johns Hopkins, U Iowa, Vanderbilt, RPI, NCTU, NTU, CUHK, HKU, NIH, Schlumberger, Halliburton and etc. He has also delivered invited talks at conferences such as SPIE Photonics West, SPIE Optics & Photonics, SPIE Defense & Commercial Sensing, ACS meetings, ECI Advances in Optics, IEEE Photonics Conference, IEEE NANOMED, PittCon, SciX/FACSS, META, and etc. He has actively engaged in serving the scientific community by the following participation: IEEE NANOMED (general program co-chair), IEEE Optical MEMS & Nanophotonics (Steering and technical committee member), SPIE Photonics West and SPIE Translational Biophotonics (technical committee member), and numerous session chairing. 

Mayank Maurya completed his undergraduate studies in Engineering Physics (Honours) from IIT Dhanbad, India, in 2019. In 2020, he completed his Master’s degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology from the University of Glasgow, United Kingdom. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the NanoBioPhotonics Group at the University of Houston, Texas, U.S.A. His research interests lies in the study, design, and fabrication of various photonics and plasmonic nanostructures for biosensing application.  

Mahshid Babeli Nia obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 2017. Subsequently, she joined the University of Tehran, where she completed her Master of Science in Nanophotonics Engineering in 2022. Her research during this period focused on the "Design and Simulation of Photonic Crystal Fiber-based Plasmonic Sensors." Currently, Mahshid is pursuing her Ph.D. in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston. Her research interests lies in the fabrication, characterization, and analysis of photonic nanostructures, with a specific emphasis on their applications in biological sensing.