Lu obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia University, working with Prof. Wei Min. Too fascinated by the stimulated Raman scattering microscopy, she decided to stay at Columbia, continuing her postdoctoral work on developing new nonlinear vibrational imaging techniques. Lu joined the faculty at Caltech in 2018. Lu has recently been recognized by the 2017 ACS PHYS Division Young Investigator Award, the 2018 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, the 2019 Amgen Early Innovator Award, the 2020 NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship, the 2022 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award, the 2022 Vallee Scholar Award, and the 2023 NSF CAREER Award. Lu is also a Heritage Medical Research Institute (HMRI) investigator at Caltech.

Haomin graduated as a Ph.D. from Lehigh University. During his Ph.D., he was advised by Prof. Xiaoji Xu on developing novel s-SNOM and AFM-IR methods to reveal details in the nanoworld. Haomin joined the Wei lab in 2020 and is specifically interested in utilizing light-matter interactions as tools to resolve complex systems at fundamental levels. In his free time, Haomin enjoys Karaoke, hiking, and video games. His GOAT game so far is The Legend of Zelda: BotW.

Jiajun graduated with B.S. from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2017, majoring in Chemistry. At USTC, he worked with Prof. Guoqing Zhang on luminescent soft materials.

Kwan was raised in Seoul, South Korea. He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked in the labs of Prof. Bhargava and Prof. Bailey. When not in lab, Kwan enjoys getting outside, playing basketball, and hoping the LA Lakers will make the Western Conference Finals.

Xiaotian was born and raised in Shandong Province, China. She received her B.S. degree in Chemical Biology at College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University in 2019. During her undergraduate studies, she joined the Zoulab and worked with Prof. Peng Zou in developing voltage indicators for mitochondria.

Li-En was born and raised in Taiwan. He got his B.S. degree in Chemistry at National Taiwan University, where he worked on mass spectrometry imaging techniques in Dr. Cheng-Chih Hsu's lab. He enjoys searching for delicious food (especially desserts) outside of the lab.   

RJ graduated with a BS honors in Chemistry in 2020 from Trinity College Connecticut where he worked in a bioanalytical chemistry lab under the mentorship of Dr. Michelle Kovarik. His role involved investigating the specificity of peptide substrate reporters for Protein Kinase B in Dictyostelium discoideum. Following Trinity, RJ earned his Master's in Chemistry from Brown University in 2021 under the guidance of Dr. Ming Xian. When not in the lab, RJ enjoys traveling, exploring new places to eat, and drinking coffee! LinkedIn

Adrian was born in Baja California, Mexico where he was partially raised before moving to San Diego, California. He earned a B.S in Biochemistry from San Diego State University, under the mentorship of Dr. Christopher Harrison in his bioanalytical chemistry lab. He worked in method development for direct blood doping detection utilizing capillary isoelectric focusing. Outside of the lab, Adrian enjoys hiking, cooking, and playing video games.

Ziguang was born and raised in Wuhan, Hubei, China where he stayed there for eighteen years before he traveled to the US to pursue his undergraduate degree at UC Santa Barbara working on transition metal catalysis with Dr. Liming Zhang and Dr. Conghui Tang (HUST). After graduation, he decided to stay in California and moved south to Pasadena to pursue his Ph.D. degree at Caltech, hoping to work on the boundary of chemical biology and synthetic chemistry. Outside the lab, Ziguang enjoys traveling with his friends all around the world.

Noor was born in Illinois and raised in Southern California. She got her BS honors in chemistry from California Polytechnic State University, Pomona in 2022, where she worked in Dr. Gregory Barding’s bioanalytical chemistry lab. In her free time, Noor enjoys a good cup of coffee while reading a book!

A native of Champaign, IL, Phil received his BS in specialized chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016-2021). Phil performed highly precise mid-infrared spectroscopy in Professor Benjamin McCall’s lab (2015-2018) and computational modeling of nucleic acid-targeting ligands for myotonic dystrophy type 1 in Professor Steven Zimmerman’s lab (2018-2021). After undergrad, Phil worked for a year as a post-bachelor’s student in the Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory on several projects, including waveguide-based biosensing development and synthetic lipoprotein design and characterization. In his free time, Phil is a jazz trumpeter and composer, and he enjoys reading, cooking, and playing games with friends.