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Zhaowei Liu
Research Group UCSD | Jacobs School of Engineering

Group Mission

We are dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach towards research that bridges the areas of nanoscale photonics, nanostructured materials, and plasmonics as well as their potential applications in optoelectronics and the biological sciences. The research topics transcend the boundaries of traditional disciplines and are typically a combination of fundamental science exploration, engineering design and optimization, device fabrication and characterization, and various applications. Detailed research topics include but not limited to: super-resolution high speed microscopy, biophotonics, computational imaging and spectroscopy, plasmonics and metamaterials, extreme nonlinearities and integrated optics, nanoscale light sources, and quantum sensing.

Recent News

July 2026
U.S. NSF award
Prof. Zhaowei Liu and Prof. Richard Averitt co-led a Quantum Metamaterials research team focused on making new kinds of quantum materials funded by National Science Foundation. Related Press release: UC San Diego Today and U.S. National Science Foundation
January 2026
Latest Publication
Zachary, Junxiang and Ayse's paper "High-speed blind structured illumination microscopy via unsupervised algorithm unrolling" was published in Nature Communication. The technology was highlighted on UC San Digo Today
January 2026
Latest Publication
Hongki and Junxiang et al. published "Meta-amplified dark-field interferometric scattering microscopy" in Nature Communication
January 2024
Featured news
Yu, Li, and Wonjae's paper on "Low-Dimensional Heat Conduction In Surface Phonon Polariton Waveguide" was reported by Physics World. Related Press release: Physics World
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Research Areas

High Speed Super-Resolution Imaging Super Contrast Imaging and Bio-Photonics Optical Sensing and Optical Instrumentation Plasmonics and Metamaterials Extreme Nonlinearities Integrated Nonlinear Optics Ultra-compact High-Speed Light Sources and Detectors Plasmonics Enhanced LEDs Ultrafast Optoelectronics Nano-manufacturing

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