Our group, at the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, studies the control of light in complex optical systems that couple many degrees of freedom across space and time. The scope encompasses both naturally occurring structures like biological tissue and colloidal suspension, and human-designed ones such as metasurfaces, microcavities, and photonic crystals. We are motivated by basic questions such as: Is it possible to reverse light scattering through multipath interference? What are the fundamental limits of optical devices? What can a nonlinear gain do beyond amplifying light? These questions led to physical bounds and applications such as imaging deep inside biological tissue, metalenses with record efficiencies, and a new type of frequency-comb lasers. We also develop new numerical methods to efficiently model and design these complex multi-scale multi-channel systems.

Our research employs a combination of analytic theory, simulations, experiments, data processing, and optimizations. An overall theme is the integration of physics and computation.

Current interests include

• • Wave propagation and imaging in scattering media
  • Multi-channel computational electromagnetics
  • Nonlinear dynamics in non-Hermitian systems
  • Fundamental bounds in optical systems
  • Inverse design
  • Nonlocal metasurfaces
  • Nanophotonics & plasmonics

Please see our Research and Publications pages for more information.