People


William Renninger – Associate Professor of Optics and Physics

William Renninger received his B. S. and Ph. D. degrees in Applied Physics from Cornell University. Before joining the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester he was a Postdoctoral Associate and an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Applied Physics at Yale University.

 

 Arjun Iyer – Postdoctoral Associate

Arjun Iyer received his B.Tech. in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He joins Professor Renninger’s group at the Institute of Optics after spending a year as a research associate at the optical communications group at Indian Institute of Technology Madras.  Arjun studies novel optomechanical phenomena and ultrahigh performance optical computing.

 

 Yuelin Chen – Graduate Research Associate

Yuelin Chen received her B.S. in Optoelectronic Information Science and Technology at Sun Yat-Sen University in China. She joined the group for her M.S. thesis and is continuing to her PhD degree. She is currently working on Kerr resonators and ultrashort pulse nonlinear optics.

 

 Haozhen – Graduate Research Associate

Haozhen Xu received his B.Eng. in Optoelectronic Information Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. He received his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA.  Currently, his research interest is novel optomechanical phenomena.

 

 Connor Hewson – Graduate Research Associate

Connor received his B.S. in Engineering Physics from Colorado School of Mines. During his degree he participated in undergraduate research in two-photon structured illumination microscopy. Connor is currently studying Kerr resonators and nonlinear optics.

 Liam Young – Graduate Research Associate

Liam Young received his B.S. in Optics from the University of Rochester then worked for three years at Precision Optical Transceivers as a Photonics Test Engineer before returning to the UofR for his Optics PhD. His interests cannot be contained, but they can be partially listed: the histories of tyrants, the organization of human systems, movies people tell him are good, music that makes him move, and books by the dead. His research currently concerns optical neuromorphic computing.

 

 Wendao Xu – Graduate Research Associate

Wendao Xu received his B.Eng. in Optoelectronic Information Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. He joined the group for his M.S. program thesis and is continuing on with the group for his PhD degree. Currently, he is investigating optomechanical interactions in novel optical fibers.

 

 Zhenhua Guo – Graduate Research Associate

Zhenhua Guo is currently a PhD student in the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. He received his B.S of Opto-electronic Information and Science from Tianjin University, China. During his undergraduate study he spent one year as an exchange student at the College of Optical Science, University of Arizona. Zhenhua joined the group as an MS student and is continuing on to the PhD degree.

 

 


Alumni

Victor Bucklew     Then: Postdoctoral Associate     After: Harris Corporation

Qian Yang  Then: MS Research Assistant    After: PhD CREOL UCF

Christopher Spiess Then: MS Research Assistant    After: PhD Fraunhofer IOF

Zhiqiang Wang Then: Postdoctoral Associate     After: Marie Curie Research Fellow Aston University

Sarat Tirumala Then: PhD Student     After: Intel

Xue Dong Then: PhD Student     After: PostDoc at Kastler–Brossel Laboratory

Undergraduate researchers: Luke Potter ’20-’21, Gabriel Medina ’21, Stella Kombo ’21, Ganesh Petterson ’21, Liam Young ’19-’20, Garrett Beals ’18-’19, Gebri Mishtaku ’18, Markus Rothacker ’17-’18, Cesar Adrian Cort ’18-’19

 


Interested students and postdocs are encouraged to email for more information about joining the group.