Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Education
- 2015, Doctoral Degree, Physics, Harvard University
- 2010, Bachelor's Degree, Physics, Wesleyan University
Biography
Wade Hsu joined the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in August 2019. He received his B.A. with high honors in physics and mathematics from Wesleyan University, and carried out his Ph.D. work at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before coming to USC, he was a postdoctoral fellow in applied physics at Yale University.
Dr. Hsu has co-authored over 50 papers, with over 7000 citations and h-index over 30. He holds 5 granted patents and serves as a research advisor for a start-up company Lux Labs. His work has been featured in scientific magazines and the media such as Nature, Scientific American, Physics Today, BBC News, Huffington Post, and CNET. He serves on the Editorial Board of NPG Communications Physics.
Research Summary
Dr. Hsu works on photonics in complex systems, where physics and applications meet. He has pioneered new ways to confine light in nanophotonic structures and to control wave propagation in scattering media, as well as inventing transparent displays based on resonant scattering.
His group employs a combination of experimental, numerical, and analytical techniques. The common experimental tools include optical characterizations, wavefront shaping with spatial light modulators (to synthesize customized light fields), and nanofabrication (to create tailored photonic structures). Full-wave electromagnetics simulations, many developed in the group, are used extensively for design and to extract information that cannot be directly measured. A variety of analytical treatments--such as coupled-mode theory, random matrix theory, and diagrammatic methods--are also used to build minimal (yet often accurate) models that reveal key insights.
Current interests include wave propagation and imaging in scattering media, computational electromagnetics, nonlocal metasurfaces, non-Hermitian photonics, bound states in the continuum, and optical communication. See more at the group's website, https://sites.usc.edu/hsugroup/.
Awards
- 2023 PIERS Young Scientist Award
- 2022 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
- 2021 Sony Faculty Innovation Award
- 2020 Charles Lee Powell Faculty Research Award
- 2017 Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientists Finalist
- 2010 Harvard Purcell Fellowship
- 2010 American Physical Society LeRoy Apker Award
- 2010 Wesleyan Bertman Prize (2010), Graham Prize (2010), Juan Roura-Parella Prize (2010), Weller Prize (2009), Karl Van Dyke Prize (2009 & 2008), Johnston Prize (2007)
- 2006 Wesleyan Freeman Scholarship
