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2024
- (11/24) Congratulations to Bo Shrewsbury for passing his PhD thesis defense.
- (9/24) Our USC community is mourning the recent loss of Professor Wade Hsu. In the midst of this tragic news, we are very proud of his student Mahsa Torfeh for passing her PhD qualification exam today. Thanks to Profesors Hossein Hashemi, Constantine Sideris, Yonggang Shi, and Jayakanth Ravichandran for serving on Mahsa’s quals committee and helping her joint work with Wade live on.
- (9/24) Congratulations to Silvia Guadagnini for passing the PhD screening exam in Physics!!!
- (6/24) Prof. Michelle Povinelli begins serving as Vice Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
- (4/24) PhD student Raymond Yu presented his work on adaptive thermal radiators at SPIE Photonics Europe, a collaboration between the Povinelli and Ravichandran groups.
- (3/24) Congratulations to MS student Tien Hsing Wang, who just published his first paper in the group. Tien will be returning to USC as a PhD student in the Fall. We are looking forward to having you back. Tien is the recipient of a scholarship from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan.
- (1/24) Congratulations to Dr. Alok Ghanekar, who is starting his new faculty position at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
2023
- (8/23) Congratulations to graduate student Max Lien for successfully defending his PhD thesis.
- (2/23) Congratulations to graduate student Romil Audhkhasi for successfully defending his PhD thesis. Here he is pictured with his committee; thanks to Professor Wei Wu and Professor Andrea Armani.
2022
- (12/22) Congratulations to graduate student Max Lien for passing his quals.
- (12/22) Congratulations to postdoc Alok Ghanekar for being selected as a DARPA RISER for his work on nonreciprocity in thermal radiation.
- (9/22) Senior graduate student Romil Audhkhasi wrote about his experience learning to mentor junior researchers.
- (5/22) Welcome to Jimmy Li, who will be conducting undergraduate research in our lab this summer.
- (5/22) Dr. Ahmed Morsy (PhD 2020) and Dr. Aravind Krishnan (PhD 2019), both currently of Rockley Photonics, returned to campus for their long-awaited hooding ceremony.
- (5/22) Congratulations to our undergrad researchers, Cameron Davis, Marcos Girod, Iris Li, and Sean Yamaguchi, for presenting their work at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.
- (4/22) Congratulations to Mashnoon Sakib and Romil Audhkhasi for publishing our 100th journal article, and to Abhishek Mukherjee and Alok Ghanekar for the 101st!
2021
- (8/21) Welcome to our new undergraduate researchers, Cameron Davis, Marcos Girod, Iris Li, and Sean Yamaguchi, who will be working in our lab as part of the Viterbi CURVE program.
- (7/21) The final projects from our summer Virtual Internship on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM are now up on the web. Congratulation to our three Interns.
- (6/21) Three USC undergrads, Mehak Bhatia, Emma Silverstein, and Luke Pierik have been selected for our summer Virtual Internship on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM and will be working on independent creative projects during our four-week summer session.
- (5/21) We were pleased to return to campus for our first in-person group meeting in over a year. Trying out new group photo poses…
- (5/21) Welcome to summer undergraduate intern Abhishek Mukherjee, joining us virtually from India. Abhishek is the recipient of a highly-selective position in the IUSSTF-Viterbi Summer Program.
2020
- (10/20) Welcome to Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Alok Ghanekar.
- (9/20) Romil Audhkhasi and Prof. Povinelli have been busily participating in online conferences including the OSA Advanced Photonics Congress, IEEE RAPID, SPIE Optics + Photonics, Metamaterials, IPC, and FiO LS. While there is less opportunity to bump into colleagues in the hallways, the virtual format does offer the convenience of attending from your living room. More importantly, the free, online format has been a great educational opportunity for the whole group, as we have started watching and discussing recorded conference talks during group meetings — all for free!
- (9/20) Romil Audhkhasi has been selected as a new MHI Scholar. This select group of students from the department is chosen on the basis of research achievements and potential for future careers in academia. Congratulations, Romil!
- (6/20) Dr. Ahmed Morsy became the first graduate to celebrate his PhD over group Zoom. Ahmed now heads to Intel to a new position working in silicon photonics. Recent alum Dr. Aravind Krishnan (now at Rockley Photonics) joined in.
- (4/20) Congratulations to Max Lien for being selected for the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and as a NASA Space Technology Graduate Researcher.
- (3/20) Congratulations to Ahmed Morsy for successfully defending his PhD thesis.
2019
- (10/19) Congratulations to Max Lien for winning a $10,000 award from the Los Angeles Chapter Board of the ARCS Foundation.
- (10/19) Congratulations to Aravind Krishnan for successfully defending his PhD thesis.
- (6/19) We are pleased to be participating in the Breakthrough Starshot project, working on light sail design.
- (6/19) Welcome to our summer MS student interns, Xujun Sun and Fanqing Xu.
- (5/19) We are happy to receive a Technology Advancement Grant from USC Stevens to pursue commercial developments of our technology.
- (5/19) We are pleased to be affiliated with the newly created USC Center for Sustainability Solutions and are eager to contribute to advances in materials for sustainable energy solutions.
- (4/19)Welcome to our incoming student Bo Shrewsbury, who is joining in the Fall to pursue a PhD in Physics.
- (4/19)Welcome to our incoming student Max Lien, who is joining in the Fall to pursue a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-advised with Prof. Han Wang.
- (1/19) Prof. Povinelli was elected as a Fellow of the SPIE.
2018
- (11/18) Prof. Povinelli was promoted to Professor of Electrical Engineering.
- (10/18) Prof. Povinelli gave a plenary talk at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the APS Far West Section, held at CSU Fullerton.
- (7/18) Congratulations to Amedee Brennan O’Gorman on admission to the MS program.
- (6/18) Welcome to our summer undergraduate interns, Karthik Vijay AM from IIT Madras, and Mohamed Zaher from Zewail City of Science and Technology.
- (5/18) Congratulations to recent BS graduates Mingkun Chen and Elise Uyehara, who are headed to Stanford and MIT for graduate school, respectively.
- (5/18) Prof. Povinelli has been named as the recipient of the Gabilan Distinguished Associate Professorship in Science and Engineering at USC.
- (4/18) Congratulations to Dr. Shao-Hua Wu for receiving the Best Dissertation Award in Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics at USC.
- (3/18) Prof. Povinelli is a co-organizer of this year’s WiSE Research Horizons Symposium: A Showcase of Cutting-Edge Research in Health, Nano Science, and Sustainability.
- (3/18) Prof. Povinelli was a recipient of the Orange County Engineering Council’s Outstanding Engineering Merit Award.
- (3/18) Congratulations to former postdoc Dr. Luis Martinez on his new faculty position in the recently created Center for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Universidad Mayor in Santiago, Chile.
- (2/18) Congratulations to graduate Dr. Shao-Hua Wu on his new position of Optical Engineer at Kernel.
- (1/18) Our recent work on thermal homeostasis was featured on the USC news site, with the title, “How they aim to protect your Netflix access: keeping satellites warm” and was the cover image in Optica. Recent graduate Dr. Shao-Hua Wu was the lead author on this study, and undergraduate Mingkun Chen is second author. This work is part of our collaboration with researchers at Northrop Grumman, Phil Hon, Luke Sweatlock, Michael Barako, and Vlad Jankovic.
2017
- (12/17) Congratulations to Dr. Shao-hua Wu on the successful defense of his PhD thesis.
- (11/17) Professor Povinelli will give an invited talk at CLEO in May 2018.
- (11/17) Professor Povinelli will be giving an invited talk at PIERS 2017 in Singapore this month.
- (10/17) Professor Povinelli was invited to give a plenary talk at META ’18 in June.
- (10/17) Our work with collaborators at Sandia National Laboratory has been featured in Spotlight on Optics. The first author of the paper is Dr. Duke Anderson, who earned his PhD earlier in 2017.
- (9/17) Professor Povinelli has been elevated to Senior Member of the IEEE.
- (8/17) July and August are busy travel months
for Professor Povinelli, who is giving Invited Talks on the group’s
work at META’17 in Korea,
SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego, and OMN in Santa Fe.
- (8/17) Welcome to our new PhD student,
Romil Audhkhasi, who will be joining the group this Fall. Romil
recently finished his undergraduate degree at IIT Delhi and is the recipient of a USC Annenberg Fellowship.
- (5/17) Welcome to our summer intern, Arkadev Roy (bottom left), from the IUSSTF-Viterbi Program. Arkadev is an undergraduate at IIT Kharagpur.
- (5/17) Aravind Krishnan, Ahmed Morsy, and Shao-Hua Wu all made oral presentations at CLEO 2017 — in fact, Shao-Hua had two talks!
- (5/17) Congratulations to Duke Anderson for defending his PhD thesis!
- (5/17) We have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to study Thermal Homeostasis. See our Research page for more information on our work.
2016
- (10/16) Our group has been awarded a SURP Research Grant to collaborate with Dr. John Hennessey of JPL on Aluminum Plasmonics for Ultraviolet Sensors and Systems.
- (10/16) Prof. Michelle Povinelli has been elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America for “contributions to the theory and application of light forces in optical nanostructures and for the understanding and realization of nanostructures for solar energy conversion.”
- (9/16) Undergrad researcher Mingkun Chen has been awarded a Viterbi Scholarship.
- (8/16) (L to R) Aravind Krishnan, Duke Anderson, and Shao-Hua Wu made presentations at SPIE Optics + Photonics 2016, while Ahmed Morsy co-authored an invited talk given by Professor Povinelli.
- (7/16) The entire Summer 2016 crew.
- (6/16) Our lab has been selected for funding through the NG-ION Institute, a joint effort between Northrop Grumman and USC.
- (6/16) Lab alums Prof. Mehmet Solmaz, Dr. Jing Ma, Dr. Roshni Biswas, and Dr. Chenxi Lin met up at CLEO 2016 for a mini-reunion.
- (5/16) Congratulations to Shao-Hua (Nick) Wu for winning a Government Scholarship to Study Abroad (GSSA) from the Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan).
- (5/16) Duke Anderson, Roshni Biswas, and Ningfeng Huang participated in this year’s Viterbi PhD Hooding ceremony.
- (5/16) Four undergraduate interns will be joining the lab this summer: Shriddha Chaitanya (Viterbi India Program), Mingkun Chen (Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, USC), Elise Uyehara (USC), and Luqi Wang (Nankai exchange program).
- (4/16) Ningfeng Huang was selected as one of three finalists in the Viterbi School of Engineering Best Dissertation Symposium, held to select the winner of the William F. Balhaus, Jr. Prize for Excellence in Graduate Student Research.
2015
- (10/15) As of October 2015, 6 PhD students have graduated from the lab and gone on to R&D careers in optics and photonics. Pictured here are our 2015 graduates, Ningfeng Huang and Roshni Biswas.
- (8/15) Duke Anderson has won a Best Student Paper Award at the SPIE Active Photonic Materials conference, part of the Optics + Photonics Conference in San Diego, CA, sponsored by the SPIE.
- (8/15) Congratulations to Roshni Biswas on the successful defense of her PhD thesis!
- (7/15) Professor Povinelli has been elected
to the grade of Senior Member of the SPIE and Senior Member of OSA.
- (6/15) Professor Povinelli was pictured in what she calls the “cool hobbies” section of the USC Viterbi magazine.
- (5/15) Two undergraduate interns are joining the lab for summer research: Traci Takasugi from Cal Poly Pomona, and Ruyue Zhang from Nankai University.
- (5/15) Shao-Hua Wu, Duke Anderson, and Roshni Biswas all made presentations at CLEO in San Jose.
- (5/15) Welcome to Ahmed Morsy, who is joining the group as a new PhD student this fall.
- (5/15) Congratulations to Ningfeng Huang on the successful defense of his PhD thesis!
- (3/15) Our group was a part of the Viterbi Spotlight Series, in which K-12 students and teachers toured electrical engineering labs. Roshni Biswas, Duke Anderson, Shao-Hua (Nick) Wu, and Aravind Krishnan helped spark kids’ interest in our work on photovoltaics and optical trapping.
2014
- (9/14) Congratulations to Eric Jaquay on the successful defense of his PhD thesis!
- (9/14) Congratulations to Ningfeng Huang for being named as one of this year’s Ming Hsieh Institute Scholars. This select group of top PhD students from the Electrical Engineering Department is chosen by a faculty committee on the basis of their outstanding research accomplishments.
- (9/14) Current group photo.
- (5/14) Aravind Krishnan will be joining the group as a new PhD student in the fall.
- (5/14) We have two undergraduates participating in research this summer. Danika Luntz-Marti is currently a physics
major at Smith College and will be joining us through the SURE program. Ruobai Feng will be joining us from University of Nankai through an exchange organized by the USC Physics Department.
- (5/14) Shao-Hua (Nick) Wu has earned his MS in Electrical Engineering and will be returning to the group in the fall as a PhD student. Congratulations, Nick!
- (4/14) Luke Bouma has received a Goldwater Scholarship.
- (4/14) Michelle has been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure.
2013
- (10/13) Chenxi Lin has successfully defended his thesis. Congratulations, Chenxi!
- (9/13) Luke Bouma has joined the group as an undergraduate researcher working on solar energy.
- (7/13) Professor Dan Dapkus, Professor Michelle Povinelli, and collaborators were awarded the Overall Winner Runner-up prize in the Ten-Hundred and One Word Challenge at the Energy Frontier Research Center PI Meeting in Washington DC. The challenge was to make a poster describing their research using only the 1000 most common words in the English language, plus “energy.”
- (6/13) Jing (Maggie) Ma and Camilo Mejia are the first two students in the group to graduate from the PhD program! Congratulations.
- (6/13) Vivek Sahay and Debarghya Sarkar will be working in the group this summer, as part of the SURE program and the Viterbi India program, respectively. Vivek is an undergrad at the University of British Columbia, and Debarghya is an undergrad at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
- (6/13) Our experimental work on Light-Assisted Templated Self Assembly (LATS) has been highlighted in Chemical and Engineering News and on the Viterbi website. Eric Jaquay, Luis Martinez, Camilo Mejia, and Michelle Povinelli are the authors on this work.
2012
2011
2010
-
- (11/10) Professor Michelle Povinelli has
received a 2010 PECASE (Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers) Award.
2009
- (9/09) Our first paper is published. “Large tuning of birefringence in two strip silicon waveguides via optomechanical motion” by Jing Ma
and Michelle Povinelli can be found in Optics Express.
- (9/09) Jing (Maggie) Ma will be giving a presentation at the Frontiers in Optics meeting in San Jose, CA in October on her work, “Large tuning of birefringence in two strip silicon waveguides via optomechanical motion.”
- (8/09) Camilo Mejia has joined the group. Camilo is a 2nd year PhD student in Physics and holds a Provost’s Fellowship.
- (6/09) Chenxi Lin presented a poster titled “Absorption Enhancement in Silicon Nanowire Arrays with Large Lattice Constants for Photovoltaic Application” at the OSA Optics and Photonics for Advanced Energy Technology topical meeting in Boston.
- (1/09) Master’s student Steven Choi is joining the lab this semester for EE590: Directed Research.
- (1/09) Lab renovations are complete and we are starting to set up equipment for our optical characterization facility.
2008
- (9/08) We have moved into our offices in VHE 309.
- (8/08) Congratulations to Jing Ma, Chenxi Lin, and Eric Jaquay for receiving the Viterbi, Provost, and Annenberg fellowships, respectively.