Liang-Yan Hsu

Research Group Leader

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I grew up in  Hualien city in the east coast of Taiwan. During high school, I became interested in mathematics, physics, and chemistry and thought about whether humans could understand chemistry from the perspective of physics and mathematics. At that time, inspired by several popular science books and Prof. John  Pople’s work, I learned about the field of theoretical chemistry as well as chemical physics, and I was determined to become a theoretical chemist. As a result, I chose to major in chemistry and minor (nearly double major) in physics at National Taiwan University. At National Taiwan University, I knew a lot of like-minded friends in science and started my undergraduate research with Prof. Bih-Yaw Jin, Prof. Robert Silbey’s PhD student. After my undergraduate and Master’s study at NTU, I moved to Princeton University and pursued doctoral studies in the department of chemistry (2010-2015) under the guidance of Prof. Herschel Rabitz, a pioneer in the field of quantum control. At this stage, I worked on a variety of topics in the field of molecular electronics and quantum transport (a subfield of condensed matter physics). Besides, I was also interested in  ultrafast dynamics and signal processing (time-frequency analysis) and finished several studies. After my PhD study, I moved to Northwestern University and worked with Prof. George Schatz as a postdoctoral research associate and then joined the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences as a faculty member in the summer of 2017. 

I have a wide range of interest in physical chemistry, nanotechnology, AMO (atomic, molecular, and optical) physics, and condensed matter physics. My research interest includes four directions:

  1. Nanoelectronics (including molecular electronics and 2D  material electronics)
  2. Methodology of quantum transport theory and its applications (including electron transport, exciton transport, heat transport, and spin transport)
  3. Light-matter interactions at the nano scale (including nano-scale  plasmonics  and  photophysical process, e.g., fluorescence, resonance energy transfer, and Raman spectroscopy),
  4. Signal processing and ultrafast dynamics in molecules and condensed matters.

My curriculum vitae (CV) can be found: http://www.iams.sinica.edu.tw/project/quantum_transport/pages/hsu-cv