Prize Recipient

Hui Cao
Northwestern University

Citation:

"For her groundbreaking contributions to the experimental studies of coherent light generation and transport in disordered media, including her invention of microlasers based on disordered media."

Background:

Hui Cao received her B.S. degree in physics from Peking University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University in 1997. She has been on the faculty of Northwestern University in Physics and Astronomy, first as an as Assisant Professor (1997-2002), later as an Associate Professor.

Cao's primary research interests are in the areas of quantum optics and mescopic physics. Her projects include studies of mescopsic transport of photons in nanostructures, coherent light generation in disordered media, chaotic microcavity lasers.

Among the honors she has received are the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Overseas Chinese Physics Association Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award. She is a member of the APS and the Optical Society of America.

Selection Committee:

Antoinette Taylor (Chair), Anna Hasenfratz (12/05), Yuri Suzuki ('05 winner)(12/05), Anna C. Balazs (V. Chair)(12/06), Aihua Xie (12/06)