Principal Investigator
Yunqiu Kelly Luo
Email: kelly.y.luo@usc.edu
Office: SSC 221
[CV] [Google Scholar] [Faculty Page]
Kelly is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California. She was previously a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow and Honorary Kavli Fellow at Cornell University studying spin torque dynamics in van der Waals magnets. She received her Ph.D. in physics at the Ohio State University studying information transduction between spintronic, photonic, and magnetic states in two-dimensional hybrid systems. She obtained undergraduate degree in physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Postdocs
This could be you!
Ph.D. Students
Derek Bergner
Email: dbergner@usc.edu | Office: SSC 328 | [CV][Google Scholar]
Derek is a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Southern California. He received his Masters in physics at California State University of Long Beach (CSULB) studying the electronic band structure of Dirac semimetals and layered ferromagnetic materials through Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES). He also obtained his undergraduate degree in physics at CSULB while fabricating graphene heterostructure devices for novel electron transport measurements.
Orion Smedley
Email: os94@cornell.edu | os_513@usc.edu
Orion is a 4rd year PhD student at Cornell University working closely with the USC team developing ultrafast Sagnac MOKE interferometry. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In his spare time, he enjoys juggling and ice skating. He currently holds multiple world records for judggling related events.
Xiaokun Yu
Email: xiaokuny@usc.edu
Xiaokun is a first year PhD at the University of Southern California. She obtained her undergraduate degree in physics at Johns Hopkins University studying ferromagnetic insulators and master’s degree in computer science at Columbia University with emphasis on computational sciences. She has a cat named Dirac.
Undergraduate Researchers
Serena Liu
Email: sliu7930@usc.edu
Serena is a senior undergraduate student majoring in Astronomy and Physics at the University of Southern California. She is excited to explore different fields of physics.
Kyle Li
Email: kyleli@usc.edu
Kyle is a Junior undergraduate student majoring in Physics and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Southern California. He is working with the team on various hands-on aspects of research.
Mowen Zhao
Email: mowenzha@usc.edu
Mowen is a Junior undergrad at the University of Southern California, having a major in Astronomy and a minor in Artificial Intelligence Applications. He is excited to gain more hands-on experience in the lab and apply his analytical knowledge in various settings. He plans to pursue a PhD after graduation.
Eric Huang
Email: ehuang97@usc.edu
Eric is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, majoring in Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics. He is eager to deepen his understanding of physics and explore its diverse applications. He plans to pursue a masters.
Group Alumni
Alejandro Reyes
Email: reyesae@usc.edu
Alejandro is current a graduate student in the Physics PhD program at the University of California, Riverside. During his senior year as a Physics major student at the University of Southern California, worked on developing high-quality van der Waals heterostructures and learning about optics setups.