As a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow, Hongyan plans to enable ultra-precise medical diagnostics and biosensing through quantum photonics.
Hongyan will develop new systems for infrared spectroscopy and ellipsometry using entangled photon pairs. These systems will use visible sources and detectors to analyze how samples interact with infrared light, thanks to the visible-infrared photon entanglement.
This approach enhances sensitivity and accuracy at very low light intensities, making it ideal for studying delicate samples like proteins, fluorescent dyes, living cells, and tissues. This will impact fields like biosensing, environmental monitoring, and medical diagnosis. Additionally, Hongyan aims to make these systems more compact, portable, and scalable.
Hongyan will pivot from Nanophotonics to Quantum Optics