Luat T. Vuong, Applied Optical Physicist, Assistant Professor

Alma Karen Gonzalez Alcalde (postdoc 2022-2023) studied light-induced magnetism in plasmonic nanodisks while in our group. She is now a researcher at CICESE in Ensenada, Mexico (her Alma Mater).

Ji Feng (postdoc '20-'23) graduated from the University of California, Riverside with a PhD degree in chemistry. She is interested in both top-down and bottom-up techniques to prepare new functional materials, including mesoporous materials, plasmonic nanoparticles and photonic crystals. She also wants to extend her ability in understanding optics and applying nanomaterials in computer vision. She is a big fan of Japanese manga, and has followed Detective Conan for more than 20 years. 

James Leung (MS '20-'22) is a Master's student in ME who graduated from UCR in 2016 and returned for more in 2019. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with friends and/or playing sports and video games. He prefers team sports such as football and basketball because he likes working together with people.

Miguel Mandujano was funded by an UC MEXUS Postdoctoral Fellowship ('20-'21) and studied nanophotonic scattering interactions while in the group.

Baurzhan Muminov (PhD'19-'22) spent half of his life in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where he was actually recruited for the Uzbekistan junior football team. He spent the next half of his life in Astana, Kazakhstan, where he received his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics and Applied Math at the Eurasian National University. He completed his Master's in Optical Engineering at Tomsk Polytechnic University in Tomsk, Russia. He is in the PhD program in ME at UCR. Besides football, Baurzhan has former pre-professional training as a "guard against bears". In his free time, he enjoys swimming and working with PC hardware. 

Grayson Andronicos was our in-house designer while in our group. He now works with window technology.

Frank Rodriguez joined as an undergrad and returned for the MS. He's involved with the Robotics Club at UCR, which he and a group of friends co-founded. Frank enjoys Disneyland with his wife Gabby, shows with his friends, and reinstalling everything but the kitchen sink.

Edward Zhu was funded by NSF and learned about graphics, travel, and light-matter interactions for computing while in our group.

Sophie Weiss was funded by NSF and learned about coding, nanophotonics and plasmonics (attended the 2021 Gordon Research Conference), mentored others, fabricated Langmuir Blodgett films, and invented a method for 3D coating while in our group.

Matthew Shin was funded by NSF as an intern in 2022 and gained skills in 3D printing and experiments while in our group.

Paul Lou was funded under NSF as a postdoc, assisted with measurements, and learned about machine learning while in our group. 

Gaurav Ahuja was funded by NSF and DARPA and learned about machine learning while in the group.  In his free time, he enjoys not only cooking but eating well, although he is somewhat of a Ketchup addict and enjoys his food in a pond of sauces. 

Daniel Martinez joined us as a senior in MSE. He's interested in biomaterials, more specifically drug delivery, as well as state-of-the-art microscopy and imaging. Outside of class, Daniel is a part of the Legacy Roundtable program for the Council of African American Parents (CAAP) and tutors young scholars in Math every weekend. He spends any free time playing sports with his friends.  He is now an R&D Engineer at Marvell NanoLab.

Shaya Nirenberg was a visiting inventor while in our group. He lived in many countries as a child and didn't learn to write English until highschool. He started his own company at the age of 20, printing artwork and repairing lasers, among many other things.  Shaya drove across the country from NYC with his dog and visited us for a month at UCR before getting hired as an Automation Engineer, where he helps to minimize total boredom in the world.  

Reid Watanabe was in the Master's program in ME at UCR after completing his undergrad degree with Honors. Reid has worked at CE-CERT on a vehicle-to-grid (V2G)  research project for 2 years in addition to participating in the Vuong group. In the Vuong group, Reid tackled the demo of signal multiplexing on conducting polymers. He appreciates the joys of television in his rare free time with his dog (awake or asleep) and practices kendo as a hobby. 

Dhamar Morales Uriostegui developed a genetic algorithm to study bubbles, helped build a database on insects vision, and helped start the solar desalination project while in our group. She also completed her Honors capstone project around the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy and its social and health impacts on students. As a UCR ME student, Dhamar participated in the MSRIP with the Vuong lab. Dhamar spends her personal free time with family.

Kyle Rowland joined the Vuong group as a senior in MSE. His unofficial focus was Biomaterials and Polymers. Kyle wants to advance orthopedic prosthetics and to integrate cutting-edge medical technology to improve people's lives. He believes that Occam's razor should be applied to the arts and humanities, too.  

Segolene Combettes visited us from the Centre d’Élaboration de Matériaux et d’Etudes Structurales (CEMES) in Toulouse, France in 2018. She was a PhD student and is now trained in data science as the director of R&D at Alia Sante.