Our group is broadly interested in using computational imaging and sensing, optical system design, and AI to better understand and improve how physical and biological systems interact with light. Our overarching goal is to develop and build novel optical tools to advance discovery in fundamental science and impact real-world applications, particularly in biology and medicine. We are located in beautiful Irvine, California.
We are interested in both the fundamental aspects of designing optical systems for improved performance and developing new computational methods to derive biomedical and physical insights, as well as translating these advances into practice. We are pursuing our research directions by exploring the following three major topics.
Students interested in working with us can check information in the Openings! page .
Research Topics
Designing and building smarter optical system for improved optical microscopy, sensing and information processing.
Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to design better computational tools for optics.
Tailoring our system for fundamental and real-world biomedical applications, such as understanding our brain and its diseases.
News:
12/2025: Sicheng and Yunong won prestigious Henry Samueli Endowed Fellowships. Also several of undergraduate students (Chad, Nicholas, Tiffany, Aileen, Vishakh, Theone, Kassandra) won UROP Fellows! Congratulations!
10/10/2025: Our group had to our first lab retreat at Korean BBQ and Crystal Cove beach.
9/25/2025: Our team was awarded a NIH grant through its venture program. Read news here .
9/17/2025: Fei co-hosted an Optica Incubator Meeting on Optical Implementations of Neural Networks at Washington DC.
9/8/2025: Fei was selected as a Scialog Fellow for new Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) Initiative.
7/3/2025: Our News and Views paper on On-chip Nonlinear Programmability is published in Nature Photonics!
7/1/2025: We officially opened our lab at Irvine, California!
6/11/2025: Fei co-chaired Computational Cameras and Displays Workshop of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2025 (June, Nashville, TN).
3/2/2025: Fei chaired the 4-day Neurophotonics sessions of Annual NeuroTech Convention of Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics 2025 (in Los Angeles). We thank our wonderful invited speakers and attendees for making our session engaging and sharing new scientific advances!
Funding organizations
We are grateful to the organizations supporting our work:
