Event
ECE Colloquium Series - Qing Gu, NC State
Friday, April 24, 2026
3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, Room 1110
Darcy Long
301 405 3114
dlong123@umd.edu
Speaker: Qing Gu, Associate Professor, North Carolina State University
Title: "Luminescent Optical Metamaterials and Devices for Quantum and Integrated Photonics"
Abstract: A key missing element in high-performance photonic integrated circuits (ICs) and other chip-scale photonic systems is an on-chip light source that is simultaneously efficient, functional, IC-compatible, and electronically addressable. I will present several on-chip light sources that advance this goal, including topologically protected robust micro-ring array lasers, bound-state-in-the-continuum photonic crystal lasers with topological polarization vortex with a large single mode emission range, metasurface light sources with circularly polarized emission, and nanoscale LEDs. I will also discuss emerging applications of nanophotonic devices and metamaterials in areas such as chip-scale atom cooling and trapping, and photonic neuromorphic computing.
Bio: Qing Gu is an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, jointly appointed in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics. She received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2008 and her Ph.D. degree from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. Before joining NC State, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas from 2016 to 2021. Her research focuses on nanophotonic semiconductor light sources based on emerging materials and innovative cavity designs, active and topological hyperbolic metamaterials, miniature magneto-optical traps for atom cooling and trapping, and photonic neuromorphic computing. She is the author of the book Semiconductor Nanolasers (Cambridge University Press) and a recipient of the ARO Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, and DARPA MTO Pitch Day Award.
