Faculty Profiles

Core research areas for Professor Lo are biomedical electronic and optical devices and systems and nanoscaled semiconductor devices. His group designs biomedical devices and systems that combine microfluidic, photonic, acoustic, and electronic technologies for in-vitro and in-vivo diagnosis and prognosis for a variety of diseases including cancers, infectious diseases, and chronic diseases.  One key objective of biomedical research in his group is to develop point-of-care devices that can drastically reduce healthcare cost and improve patient outcomes.  To meet this objective, his group emphasizes translational research and collaborates with researchers and doctors from biomedical industry and medicine.

Lo is also interested in new tool developments that can enable and accelerate discoveries in biological sciences.  Such unique tools are fabricated using techniques of nanoengineering, microfluidics, and optoelectronics.  They can benefit research in stem cells, cancers, and bacteria and microbes.

Lo’s group also makes significant efforts in the research of nanoscaled optoelectronics for biosensing, optical communications, and quantum communications.  Projects include photodetectors that can detect single photons, the smallest quanta for light, and nanoscaled photonic devices made of silicon and compound semiconductors

Capsule Bio:

Professor Yu-Hwa Lo received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1987. He worked at Bellcore as a technical staff member from 1988-1990, and became an assistant and then associate professor of Cornell University from 1991 to 1999. He became a professor of UC San Diego in 1999 and has been the director of the Nano3 Facility (Nanoscience, Nanoengineering, and Nanomedicine) since 2005. Currently his research interests are in microfluidics and optofluidics, lab-on-a-chip devices for biomedicine, bio-imaging, nanophotonics, and semiconductor single-photon detectors. He has published over 500 papers and been awarded 50 patents. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and the IEEE.