简介

Cao focuses on understanding and controlling light transport, scattering, absorption and amplification in complex photonic nanostructures. Broadly put, her research is concerned with complex photonic materials and nanophotonic devices, both for fundamental physical studies and for applications. Her research involves nanofabtrication, material characterization, optical measurement with high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution, and numerical simulation. Current research projects include: - development of design, fabrication and characterization of semiconductor micro- and nano-lasers; - realization of random laser - an unconventional laser whose cavity is formed by optical scattering in a disordered medium, and fundamental study of light transport and localization in active random media; - investigation of color generation by photonic nanostructures in nature and fabrication of biomimetic samples.