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Events

Upcoming ESE Events

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Nov 10 4:00 pm

ESE Seminar: Chethan Pandarinath at Uncas A. Whitaker Hall

Nov 13 8:30 am

Imaging Science & Engineering seminar | Abhinav K. Jha at Preston M. Green Hall

Nov 13 10:00 am

ESE Seminar: Bruno Loureiro

Members of WashU’s Engineers Without Borders chapter gather at the group’s inaugural Run to Build 5K on the Danforth Campus Oct. 17. The event raised support for the group’s clean water projects in Uganda.

Engineers Without Borders holds first Run to Build 5K

Money raised will support clean water projects in Uganda.

10.22.2026

This image visualizes the design of a heterogeneous integrated photonic chip incorporating various functional single-crystalline nanomembranes. These ultrathin layers add capabilities that the underlying chip materials cannot provide alone. Researchers at WashU have developed a new framework to expand the materials, functions and designs on a single chip, opening new possibilities for faster, more powerful and multifunctional photonic technologies. (AI generated image courtesy Bae lab).

New building blocks expand functions of photonic chips

With integration of single-crystal nanomembranes, WashU engineers establish a framework for photonic circuits.

10.08.2026

Lan Yang’s lab unlocked new capabilities for whispering-gallery-mode-based sensors by extending its sensing range beyond the immediate surface, while preserving the exceptional sensitivity that has made these sensors so powerful. This can potentially open entirely new sensing modalities and applications. (Credit: Yang lab)

Listening for cells: New sensor detects and classifies freely flowing particles without labels

Lan Yang’s lab develops new sensing technique to detect nanoparticles.

09.22.2026

Lawrence elected as senior member of Optica

Mark Lawrence recognized for outstanding contributions to optical community.

09.17.2026

This illustration visualizes the central finding of Nie, Qiu and Lew's article on single-molecule orientation-localization microscopy (SMOLM): that how you illuminate a molecule matters as much as how you detect it. A single fluorophore sits on a glass coverslip, excited in sequence by four polarized beams optimized via a Fisher-information framework. Each beam's brightness depicts its probability to excite fluorescence. Polarizations aligned with the molecule's transition dipole (red arrow) excite it strongly, while orthogonal polarizations barely excite it at all. Tailoring these modes specifically for a microscope’s dipole-spread function sharpens orientation-measurement precision. Cover image designed and coded with Claude (Anthropic, Sonnet 5 model, accessed via Claude Code). (Credit: Kaizhi A. Nie).

How light can reveal the hidden orientation of a single molecule

Matthew Lew’s lab crafts imaging technology to learn molecular details.

09.10.2026

With a grant from the National Science Foundation, WashU engineer Shantanu Chakrabartty will design hybrid neuromorphic and quantum computing systems that could unlock huge energy efficiencies. (Image: Shutterstock)

Grant funds hybrid system that could spur vast energy improvements to computing

WashU’s Shantanu Chakrabartty will develop hybrid neuromorphic, quantum computing system that can tap into power of random fluctuations, thermal and quantum.

08.25.2026

From left: Eason Zhang, Naomi Hsieh, Baiming Zhang

WashU Ursaworks Robotics finishes strong at 2026 ARC Championship

Team earns place in top eight among highly competitive field of university robotics teams.

08.07.2026

Lew elected as senior member of SPIE

Matthew Lew recognized for outstanding contributions to optical imaging community.

07.28.2026

Li wins IEEE Best Paper award

Jr-Shin Li and doctoral student Yuan-Hung Kuan honored for quantum control research.

07.15.2026