People Spotlights

Graduate Student, Applied Physics and Materials Science

Bilgehan Baspinar

I am a fourth-year Applied Physics graduate student in Professor Andrei Faraon’s group. My research focuses on optical dielectric metasurfaces made of nano-structures smaller than the wavelength of light. These metasurfaces, with funky patterns, can mimic any traditional optical element despite being super lightweight and thin, and can achieve even more. I got involved in many different projects, yet one of the projects that got me the most excited was a collaboration with NASA-JPL, as I dreamed about working at NASA as a kid! I ended up realizing that my childhood heroes were regular people who could even get lazy sometimes, though — but that’s a story for another time. It was fantastic to see that we can correct the phase aberrations in a coronagraph with our metasurfaces. How exciting is it — even the possibility of contributing to the discovery of a new exoplanet? I am grateful for the opportunity to work with such cool people by coming to Caltech. Outside the lab, I am into traveling, photography, tennis, reading, and singing. Hit me up if you want to jam or do optics together!

Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering

Smruthi Karthikeyan

Dr. Karthikeyan's research interests lie at the interface of microbial ecology, computational biology and engineering. She builds predictive models that integrate physicochemical and transport data with multi-omic (DNA, RNA and metabolome-level) data to make accurate predictions of microbial community responses to environmental perturbations.

Jane Bae

Professor Bae's research focuses on the physical understanding and modeling of structures associated with near-wall turbulence. Her main research goal is to develop high-fidelity models that reduce the computational cost to simulate high-Reynolds-number turbulent flows. These models will allow simulations to be utilized in the design cycle of wind farms and aircrafts and in predictions of atmospheric flows, reducing the overall time and effort associated with these processes.

Eric Mazumdar

Eric Mazumdar's research lies at the intersection of machine learning and economics. He is broadly interested in developing the tools and understanding necessary to confidently deploy machine learning algorithms into societal-scale systems.

Franca Hoffmann

Franca Hoffmann's research is focused on the interface between applied mathematics and data analysis, driven by the need to provide rigorous mathematical foundations for modeling tools used in applications.

Mohammad Mirhosseini

Mohammad Mirhosseini is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, and previously was a KNI postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. In the past he has worked on entangling distant transmon qubits via microwave waveguides and developed integrated devices for microwave-to-optical quantum transduction. Mohammad did his PhD in the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. His thesis work was on high-capacity quantum communication with structured photons.

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