Research

           We study heat and light.
        On the fundamental side, we develop experimental techniques to investigate energy transport, conversion, and dissipation across length scales ranging from macroscopic materials down to the realm of single molecules and atoms. We aim to resolve how heat, and the associated energy carriers including electrons, phonons, and photons, flows, and how light interacts with matter at the intrinsic interaction scales. A key part of our work involves designing and building instrumentations incorporating microfabricated calorimeters and scanning thermal probes, capable of directly measuring thermal properties at the picowatt to sub-picowatt level with nanoscale spatial resolution. These tools are now being integrated with optical spectroscopies to enable correlated probing of heat and light and to map energy pathways across diverse physical processes.
      On the applied side, we have been developing technologies to enhance or suppress heat transfer in materials, with applications in thermal management for microelectronics and advanced photonic devices. At the intersection of heat and light, we study how thermal radiation and photonic hot carriers can be harnessed for high-efficiency energy conversion, such as in thermophotovoltaic systems for waste heat recovery and plasmon-enhanced catalysis. Recently, at the limits of experimental detectivity, we have also invested in the development of computational methods and hybrid experiment-numerical enhancement techniques for thermal and optical applications, in particularly leveraging machine learning and information theory to push the boundary to enable previously inaccesible faster, more sensitive thermal sensing and photodetection.