Science AMA Series: I am Lan Yang, an electrical engineering professor
at Washington University in St. Louis. My research is in nanophotonics,
high-quality optical microresonators, and finding better ways to detect
nanoparticles. AMA!
Abstract
Hi reddit! Thank you so much for your excellent questions today. I’m
sorry I didn’t get to answer all of them, but I will try to come back
later today to answer those I missed. I hope it was as enjoyable for you
as it was for me. I am Lan Yang, an electrical engineering professor at
Washington University in St. Louis. My interests are in transforming the
research discoveries in fundamental science to technologies that could
benefit the society and improve the quality of life. My research has
centered around high-quality optical microresonators, which could
significantly enhance light-matter interactions and therefore triggers
many interesting physics. The research in my group falls in two
categories: one is about fundamental understanding of interesting
physics in high-quality optical resonators, and the other is to seek
applications enabled by such a structure, such as sensing —
particularly, nanoscale sensing — which have a direct impact on broad
applications from environmental monitoring to early disease diagnosis
and health care. A few years ago, we developed an on-chip sensor that
could detect and measure the size of individual nanoparticles. Recently,
my group has made some progress in unconventional control of light flow
in optical structures by exploiting special features associated with
parity-time-symmetry and exceptional points. It’s not surprising that
fundamental science doesn’t show a direct connection to applications.
But when opportunities come, it’s natural for us to combine these two
directions. This time, we are developing a new sensing technology by
using a special feature associated with a resonator when it’s operated
around exceptional points.