Weilu Gao

Dr. Weilu Gao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Utah. He holds a B.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2011) and a Ph.D. from Rice University (2016), followed by postdoctoral research there until 2019. Before joining Utah, he worked as a Photonics Designer at Lightmatter Inc. (2019–2020). His research focuses on photonics/optoelectronics of nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes and 2D materials, with applications in computing, sensing, and energy. He has over 90 publications and 5,800+ citations.

Research interests include reconfigurable photonics for machine learning, chiral photonic materials, and scientific computing using optical neural networks. Key projects involve developing diffractive optical neural networks (DONNs) for PDE-solving and energy-efficient computing, programmable chiral heterostructures, and wafer-scale aligned carbon nanotube architectures. His work bridges nanomaterial science with optical engineering, emphasizing scalable fabrication and cross-disciplinary applications.

Notable achievements include publishing in Nature Communications, Advanced Photonics Research, and ACS Photonics. He leads the Weilu Gao Lab, which actively collaborates on NSF-funded projects (e.g., 2022 NSF award for carbon nanotube-based semiconductors). Professional activities include organizing workshops on chiral photonics and presenting at conferences like ECS Meetings.

Grants include NSF funding for semiconductor research and collaborations with institutions like the University at Buffalo and Tokyo Metropolitan University. His lab recruits students and postdocs in scientific computing, photonics, and nanomaterials.